Captain Phillips

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS              C               
USA  (134 mi)  2013 ‘Scope  d:  Paul Greengrass                    Official site

In America, you just can’t explain the passion exhibited for typical Hollywood action movies like this one, as it receives all kinds of critical accolades and people buy into the deluded belief that this is good filmmaking, when in fact this is fairly typical of what any decent Hollywood director can do, and this one is no exception.  Paul Greengrass is a British film director who made a name for himself with BLOODY SUNDAY (2002), where his startling use of handheld cameras gave the viewers a near documentary, you-are-there perspective in a stunning recreation of actual events that took place in 1972 when British paratroopers opened fire on a peaceful Irish demonstration killing 14 Irish protesters.  The style was immediate, as it won the top prize at the Berlin Film festival, which it shared with Miyazaki’s SPIRITED AWAY (2001), and it remains at the pinnacle of his best work.  Since then, Greengrass directed the second and third installments of the Bourne series (2004, 2007), both extremely popular, while also directing UNITED 93 (2006), a somewhat fictionalized recreation of what happened on 9/11, for which he received near unanimous praise.  So while the man has established credentials in both Britain and America, this is not among his best work, despite the overpraised accounts, but is instead just another one of the over-amped Hollywood productions, something of a recreation of actual events when a U.S. cargo ship, the MV Maersk Alabama, was hijacked by Somali pirates in 2009, taking the captain hostage briefly until he was rescued in a daring Navy SEALS operation.  Based upon the book, A Captain's Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALS, and Dangerous Days at Sea, by Stephan Talty and ship captain Richard Phillips, the film stars the ever likeable Tom Hanks as the lead character, who actually takes a crack at a Boston accent early in the film, but it disappears throughout the film. 

While the captain’s actions have been described as heroic, some crew members have considered him reckless, as there were 16 pirate attacks and eight hostage situations in the three weeks prior to their hijacking, yet he ignored warnings to stay at least 600 miles off the coast of Somalia, presumably to save money in a shorter distance, as the ship was just 240 miles off the coast instead, where he is being sued by 11 members of the 20-man crew for reckless endangerment, and call the movie version a big lie, Captain Phillips Is a Lie: Real Captain Is No Hero, According To Crew.  Hollywood has a history of embellishing the truth, and even award Best Picture Oscars, as they did in the case of Argo (2012), often creating American heroes for their beloved stars while other equally deserving, or in some cases even more deserving actions are ignored for the sake of a fictionalized movie. While that is a major issue in the case of Argo, not so much here, even though it may earn Hanks another Oscar nomination.  The real issue here is the filmmaking itself, which goes on far too long, showing little character development, instead featuring characters screaming and yelling all the time, while exhibiting Hollywood overkill, where the constant drumbeat of rising percussion from Henry Jackman’s score just overplays its hand, attempting to push this film down people’s throats, as if that makes for an exciting, pulse-pounding thriller.   A better editing job might have helped, where the introductory establishing shots in both Somalia and Vermont are superfluous, as no backstory is really provided, or needed, while Billy Ray’s script couldn’t be more cliché ridden, showing no interaction between crew members other than the usual gripes about overwork, and equally appalling language coming from the military ship captain as they receive incoming instructions about the hijacking in progress. 

While some may be thrilled by the enthralling build-up of suspense, much of it slowed to a crawl, as the pirates attempted to locate the missing crew, room by room, step by step, going ever lower into the bowels of the ship, yet the drumbeat kept pounding, as if there was something more happening.  This is all generic Hollywood filmmaking in the style of THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE (1972), and then again in TITANIC (1997).  Not much has changed here, as except for a few brief moments, which are exhilarating flare-ups, such as the taking of the ship, the seizure of the bridge, the crew overpowering one of the hijackers, the attempted exchange of captains, and a few brief exchanges between the U.S. military vessels and the Somali pirates with the captain in a lifeboat at sea, most of the time is spent simply adrift at sea, with pirates continually arguing about what to do.  Some of what the movie depicts is borderline ridiculous, such as the pirates refusing to allow the captain, or one of their own men, to dress serious wounds of two of the pirates, as they have him surrounded with automatic rifles while he’s unarmed, so what threat does he pose?  The wound poses more of a threat, as a prolonged, untreated infection could lead to something far worse, and it was negatively affecting the ability of both pirates to maintain focus.  The real discovery here is first-time actor Barkhad Abdi as Muse, the head pirate that convincingly plays a man who’s used to facing adversity, perhaps more than any of the others, who continually stands up to Captain Phillips, and the American military, displaying a unique brand of bravery himself, even if he is an outlaw, as he has to continually keep a group of undisciplined followers from self-destructing.  Perhaps what’s most interesting about the film is Muse gets more attention than any other character in the film, including the title character, which is the one choice the film gets right.  While Abdi  is terrific throughout, Hanks really only displays any specialized acting skills in the final few moments, when he’s still in shock after the NAVY SEALS rescue mission, but those few minutes of confusion may be the most humanizing moments in the entire film.   

A Hijacking (Kapringen)

A HIJACKING (Kapringen)       B            
Denmark  (103 mi)  2012  d:  Tobias Lindholm             Official site

The Danish put their own characteristic spin on everything, from the moody and melancholy tone of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the national support the country provides through a system of public grants provided to artists, funding theater, museums, and various film projects like this one.  The nation itself is a country of 5 million people populating a small collection of about 50 islands, where the national economy is built upon a huge commercial shipping fleet, where nearly every family has someone employed in the industry, including the director’s own father.  So in 2007 when a Danish cargo ship was hijacked by Somali pirates in the Indian Ocean, it became a personal story that nearly everyone in the country could intimately relate to, as someone from their family could be sitting out there in the middle of the ocean subject to the wild whims of heavily armed pirates.  The film is something of a follow-up of an earlier American documentary Stolen Seas (2012), which examines the impact of an actual November 2008 hijacking of the CEC Future, a Danish cargo ship traveling through the Gulf of Aden, events that alerted the world to the revival of this seemingly barbaric 18th century practice, becoming commonplace in the modern era along the East African coast of Somalia.  While that documentary does an excellent job recreating the hostage negotiations process, where much of what’s revelatory is gleaning insight into the little known Somali culture through the eyes and ears of the American educated Somali negotiator, who was not one of the original hijackers, but was hired exclusively due to his language proficiency.  In contrast, this film is a fictionalized recreation of real events that examines the impact that piracy has on the effected Danish families back home and the company executives in Copenhagen that must eventually come to terms with the pirate’s outrageous ransom demands, originally requesting $15 million dollars.   

Largely seen through the differing eyes of two individuals, Mikkel (Pilou Asbæck), the hijacked ship’s cook, spending most of his time at gunpoint in isolation with two other crew members, separated throughout from the rest of the crew, and Peter Ludvigsen (Søren Malling), the wealthy CEO of the shipping company, constantly seen in a cramped executive boardroom with the other major players, where what’s interesting is that both men are intentionally kept as much in the dark as possible, offering no clues that might in any way be considered helpful.  Instead the crew is continually bullied and intimidated, where they’re not even allowed to use the bathroom for the first month, forced to live in their own putrid stink in sweltering heat with no air circulation.  Meanwhile the suited executives have to deal with Omar (Abdihakin Asgar), often heard on the phone, but never seen, where they refuse to provide information about the crew, insisting they speak exclusively about money.  The company hires an expert on hijacking, but Peter refuses the advice to hire an impartial negotiator, insisting that he carry out his chief executive duties, which includes working in the best interests of the company and the crew.  What might surprise some is the polite and overly courteous language displayed between Peter and Omar, where neither wants to convey any hint of weakness, both crunching numbers, behaving as if they are dealing in the world of high finance.  While this is Peter’s specialty, he’s never before been threatened by the execution of his crew members if he doesn’t produce a high enough number.  At times, both sides crumble under the pressure, made worse by not knowing what to expect, often quickly cutting off phone lines to elevate the dramatic suspense.  While these death threats are typical piracy maneuvers and practiced techniques, one still never knows just what they’re dealing with on the other end of the phone line, where like police hostage negotiations, the important thing is to maintain regular contact and make use of what little trust can be established.

Time drags on and days turn into weeks, where the growing frustration eventually turns into months, where the families live in a state of hysteria, never knowing if their loved one is living or dead, where the company cannot provide any information, as they don’t want anything getting into the newspapers or television reports where it can be used against them.  The impact grows typically unrealistic, as the board can’t understand why negotiations can’t be wrapped up like any other high stakes deal, and family members are shunned from the excruciating pressure that falls on the shoulders of Peter, who really has to shut out all outside conditions to be able to stand what he’s doing, which is prolonging the agony of men’s lives and obliterating the hopes of the families that have lived for months without them.  Onboard, the ship quickly runs out of food and psychological tensions only escalate, where the hijackers finally allow Mikkel to call his wife, but interrupt the call screaming at the wife to demand that the shipping owner pay the ransom money, and then quickly hang up.  The effect is brutal, as are the lingering conditions onboard, which resemble the unbearable treatment of POW’s in Vietnam, thrown into the empty storage shell of the vessel, like living in a cave with no light whatsoever, losing whatever shred of humanity they have left.  In the end, both sides behave like animals, stripping themselves of that same humanity, showing literally no mercy whatsoever, as these are the terms of the game.  What sets this version apart is the understated minimalism, stripped down to the bare essentials, providing as little as possible, using a cinéma vérité style to show a wrenching documentary style realism, where brief moments of crippling emotional violence fill the screen, followed by an interminable silence, where one waits, but time needlessly drags on, turning this into a brooding and morbid exercise of prolonged misery and doom, where a feeling of helplessness prevails, as all tactics fail, yet both sides continue to wear down and eventually exhaust the other into submission.  This is a particularly gloomy film with ominous reverberations, exposing a tiresome and damaging process that may alter the lives of those who pay the ultimate price, like any soldier returning from the particularly catastrophic conditions of war, where the haunting ferociousness of the experience has the capacity to extinguish the human spirit.

Stolen Seas

STOLEN SEAS                       C+                  

USA  Canada  Somalia  Denmark  Philippines  Estonia  (88 mi)  2012  d:  Thymaya Payne Official site

Much of this plays out like a journalistic exposé, where this feels like an in-depth television news piece rather than a feature length documentary movie, as this has a History Channel feel throughout in what is mostly a historical analysis of a particular event in time, the November 2008 hijacking of the CEC Future, a Danish cargo ship traveling through the Gulf of Aden by heavily armed Somali pirates, an event that alerted the world to the revival of this seemingly barbaric 18th century practice, becoming commonplace in the modern era along the East African coast of Somalia.  A necessary passageway between the Arabian Sea and the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden is subject to heavy commercial traffic, estimated in the billions of dollars each year.  The film does quickly get the audience’s attention in the pre-opening credit sequence by playing the actual audio recording of the ship’s captain alerting authorities that his ship is taking incoming bazooka fire, attacked by a high speed vessel with about a dozen men armed with Kalashnikov rifles who are outracing his ship, eventually boarding his vessel.  All of this happens literally within seconds, where the real drama begins when his voice cuts off, setting in motion a strange sequence of events that ends up with a hostage negotiations crisis.  The film takes us through the process where the ship immediately veers off course steered into a safe Somalia port city, and once there, the Danish CEO of the ship, Per Gullestrup, receives a ransom call asking for $7 million dollars.  What follows is a reenactment of a series of phone calls that initiates the negotiations in order to obtain the release of the 13 crew members, while the film takes a deeper look at the root causes of why Somalia is in such desperate straights, a poverty stricken country that hasn’t had a ruling government or any acting court since a Civil War broke out in 1991 with no resolution, turning instead into a nation of warlords, reminiscent of Japan’s 19th century feudal history when rival clans used samurai warriors for protection.

One of the significant aspects of the film is tracking down both Gullestrup and his counterpart Somali negotiator Ishmael Ali, as each are operating on decisively different points of view, becoming a window into their respective cultures.  Gullestrup is pretty much what you’d expect, a conservative, tight-lipped European businessman who’s used to seeing the world strictly in dollar signs, where driving a hard bargain, streamlining costs, and weighing financial options is what he does for a living, surrounded by lawyers, and plenty of advice from police and hired consultants.  In fact, he quickly hires a disinterested spokesperson to handle all the negotiations, a professional in dealing with extortion demands, which typically takes its time, as they are subject to various threats to hopefully bring about a quick resolution, but when these tactics don’t work, the pirates tend to grow increasingly frustrated.  Ishmael Ali, on the other hand, is a unique figure, educated and fluent in English, he’s seen living an upscale life in Somalia where he nonchalantly flaunts his wealth, owning about 75 camels, claiming owning camels in Somalia is equivalent to joining an exclusive country club in America.  Having lived in the United States for 20 years, leaving due to the frenetic pace of life, he’s the lone voice that has had a chance to experience both worlds, proudly proclaiming one can live like a king in Somalia for about a thousand dollars a year.  While the filmmakers trot out American and European journalists, historians, terrorism experts, and even Noam Chomsky, supposedly an expert on everything, but none provide the rare insight of Ali, who is himself the central figure in the movie, both during the negotiations and afterwards as he assesses what it’s like living in Somalia, usually seen relaxed, dressed in flowing robes, sitting before an electric fan.  While he was not one of the hijacking pirates, he was hired by them as a translator/negotiator due to his proficient language skills, where he openly acknowledges he needed the money to give his 2-year old son the possibility of having a future.  

While piracy still holds a romantic swashbuckling notion from Douglas Fairbanks or Errol Flynn in films like THE BLACK PIRATE (1926), CAPTAIN BLOOD (1935), THE SEA HAWK (1940), or the recent PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN (2003 – 2015 and still counting) series, the more intriguing aspect of the film is what it unearths about the nearly unfathomable nation of Somalia itself.  Somalia is unlike anywhere else in the world, a communist state aligned with the Russians before the fall of the Soviet empire, they were left adrift with no one to sponsor their interests, becoming a bloody battleground in a senseless Civil War that resolved nothing, leaving half a million dead Somali’s in the wake and no acting government.  When the Americans attempted to lead a United Nations mission in 1992 to bring food to a starving nation, where 300,000 had already died from famine, they got caught up in the nation’s Civil War, attempting to arrest one of the brutally corrupt war lords who was guilty of massive human rights abuses and stealing much of the incoming food, but they paid a heavy price in doing so, as depicted in typical Hollywood style in Ridley Scott’s BLACK HAWK DOWN (2001).  Since that failed debacle, Somalia has been left alone to fend for themselves with little to no help from the outside world, where toxic chemicals wash up on their shores from discarded shipping waste, effectively destroying the shoreline fishing industry, which was once the nation’s leading source of income.  From the Somali point of view, the passing ships are simply sitting targets, potential sources of income in a nation nearly destroyed with a shattered and depleted economy.  But all evidence suggests there is no trickle down effect from the multi-million dollar ransoms paid, as a few get enormously rich, while there is no foreseeable dent in the nation’s poverty.  While the filmmakers intermix Ali’s discerning thoughts about Somalia with the increasingly frustrating, drawn out pace of the negotiations, they perhaps believe they are building interest.  But the film is more a stream of facts and information, serving more as a lecture on the tactics of Somali hijacking several years ago, never bringing the viewers up to date, so by the end we feel the filmmakers have somehow missed the point.  Due to increased policing from European Union and NATO countries, there has been a significant drop off in piracy incidents in 2012, where these days, seen from a strictly economic viewpoint, financial backers are less inclined to finance pirating expeditions due to the low rate of success.