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Captain Phillips

I'd heard good things about this film but it was actually better than I had imagined. In fact, I'd go so far as to say it's great, probably the best new film I've seen this year. A lot has to do with Tom Hanks. I never thought I'd say this, but his performance was brilliant. For much of his career, I'd had him down as a jobbing everyman, appearing in formulaic, populist fare and so I'd actively avoided him. Under the astute guidance of director Paul Greengrass however, Hanks rips this film open by downplaying the role of Richard Phillips, real-life tanker captain. No histrionics, no money-shots. Just a paunch, some grey hair and a number of stares and glances that tell us exactly what he's thinking.

Greengrass is responsible for giving Hanks his head and 'under-directing him'. When asked on Wittertainment how you direct Tom Hanks, Greengrass replied "Get out of the way. Let him get on with it". And it worked, as did the prepping of the pirates, four lads who'd never acted on film before. They're also solid, especially Barkhad Abdi as the leader/captain. Greengrass has done this before with Bloody Sunday and United 93 - stripping away all the artifice of the performances and making us think we're watching a documentary. The fact that he also knows how to ratchet up the tension and move the story along at a nice old click proves he's one of the best directors knocking about right now.

The story itself hardly needed any dramatisation. The first container ship of it's size to be boarded by Somali pirates who then kidnapped the captain, precipitating a showdown with the US navy. Writes itself really but credit must also go to the writer Billy Ray for not gilding the basic outline too much (no hand-wringing relatives, no sentimentality, no meat on the bones).

Keeping a tale like this balanced may have been eschewed by others but Greengrass gives fairly equal time to both parties - the tanker crew and the pirates. Maybe the film could be read as a critique of globalisation (Hanks and Greengrass beg to differ on this) and I reckon this is underlined when Hanks says to Abdi, "There's got to be something other than being a fisherman or kidnapping people" and he replies, "Maybe in America, Irish. Maybe in America".

Quality all round. Check it out.

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