Paul Greengrass doesn't wave a lot of flags. The suit was filed quietly last year by Muse, who became known as the Smiling Pirate for the wide grin he wore during his first perp walk in America. There are too many clearly expressed reservations here about the awesomeness of naval might, too much sympathy for the economic plight of the pirates, and too much emotional pain for Captain Phillips to be merely a triumphalist flag-waver. ![]() Like all Greengrass's work, Captain Phillips is rooted in the sceptical 70s-80s BBC drama aesthetic of Alan Clarke and Ken Loach, and in his own investigative journalism at World In Action. "No Al Qaeda here, boss," Muse says soothingly to Phillips, "just business." In the end it doesn't matter, though Al Qaeda or no, hijacking an American ship amounts to much the same thing, and soon enough the seas are bristling with the ironclad naval hotrods of US global hegemony. The fishing grounds he once relied on have been depleted, and piracy is what's left. Early on, Muse has to bluff and bribe his way past a crowd of contenders into his chance at a day's piracy (a conscious quote from On The Waterfront) for a local warlord who will certainly pocket all the profits. Like Greengrass, Tom Hanks's captain takes pains to identify with his opponent, Muse (Somalian-American newcomer Barkhad Abdi). That's all offstage here, though, where the emphasis is mainly on the up-close, the micro of one captain and four pirates, two different kinds of enormously competent professionals at close quarters, rather than the macro view of lengthy fax negotiations between pirate-sponsoring Somali warlord and Copenhagen shipping CEO seen in Danish thriller A Hijacking. What unfolds in the next two hours is gripping enough that more than a few theater armrests will. After that, it's full steam ahead and no turning back. Like Bloody Sunday and United 93, this is a true story the moment when Barack Obama personally ordered the sniper killing of three of four pirates and earned plaudits as a cold-blooded badass. Lean-and-hungry members of the world’s under-classa ragtag, brazenly opportunistic band of young Somali men stage their attack as if pulling off a smash-and-grab at a jewelry store. ![]() These were all gladly supplied by a Pentagon eager to celebrate this rare absolute victory, and the ships lend a sense of scale and grandeur to the movie that other nautical outings lack. The second half sees the pirates and their captain-hostage trapped in the ship's sealed lifeboat, hemmed in by US Navy frigates and an aircraft carrier, Seal Teams and a sniper group. The first is the Master Mariner (Conrad's final rank) plying his cargo through the great nautical arteries of global commerce, and the second, the luckless fisherman turned pirate, picking off the stragglers among the gargantuan cargo ships passing too close to the coast of Somalia, the better to ransom their contents back to their owners.Īsymmetrical warfare structures the movie, as the pirates dog a city-sized cargo ship with only two clapped-out skiffs and a threadbare mother-vessel, boarding with a makeshift iron ladder, subduing the bridge, and issuing their demands. ![]() At the heart of Paul Greengrass's Captain Phillips is the story of two eternal seafaring archetypes.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |