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Tom Hanks’ name is synonymous with great American acting. Throughout his 33-year career the man has acted in a few videogames, a handful of television shows and over 50 feature length films. He has won 69 awards, 2 of which were Best Actor Oscars. With his performance as the title character in Captain Phillips he looks to nab a third.

Based on a true story, Captain Phillips is an emotional rollercoaster centering on the 2009 hijacking of a U.S. container ship called Maersk Alabama. The hijackers are a crew of Somali pirates who also take the Alabama’s captain hostage.

Captain Phillips is the best pirate movie since (thinks very hard) Muppet Treasure Island? Admittedly the pirate genre has been flat as the prairie genre of film. The picture is structured like a conventional Hollywood movie, but at the same time it feels more mature. The Somali pirates aren’t savages with intense blood lust; they are malnourished humans who just want their basic rights met. Phillips isn’t a fearless action hero; he’s a fragile man who just wants to come out of this situation alive.

The film has the same amount of intensity as Kathryn Bigelow’s Zero Dark Thirty- it’s a pulse-pounding and nerve wracking machine, and unless you are familiar with the story you will never guess how it ends. Henry Jackman’s score reflects the chaos that is brought upon by the pirates and is the main reason for why the picture is so gripping. Surprisingly, Hanks seems to play a secondary role, though his acting is great it is mostly reactionary, the real standout performance is by Barkhad Abdi as the chilling Somalian leader. Captain Phillips is not perfect, it does have some pacing issues towards the middle of the film, but it is well worth the price of admission.

Published in Volume 68, Number 8 of The Uniter (October 23, 2013)