Captain Phillips Review

Captain Phillips had a lot to live up to after Paul Greengrass' last docudrama United 93. In many viewers' eyes, Greengrass might just be the guy who gave us Matt Damon in a pair of solid Bourne films but to me he is the director behind one of the most tragic and gripping films of the 21st century. He is politically charged, emotionally manipulative but also bloody effective.

Captain Phillips invites comparisons with United 93. Both are based on tragic true stories, though Captain Phillips is considerably less tragic, particularly for the American victims of the stories. Both find at their centre a very modern conflict of cultures. Both feature four armed attackers taking on Americans by hijacking a mode of transport. Both have differing amounts of sympathy for the attackers but much more for the innocent victims. Both employ shaky camera aesthetics to give it an added sense of realism and quick cuts that make it appear edgy and captured by a fly on the wall documentary team. The claustrophobia is also palpable in both films. In United 93, the attackers and the victims are trapped together in the small space of a passenger plane and in Captain Phillips much of the action takes place on a tiny cramped lifeboat where Phillips is forced in to close contact with his captors. In both films, many in the audience will already know how the story ends before they see it. Greengrass even employs some of the same techniques when shooting the film such as keeping those playing his protagonists and antagonists apart until they meet on screen. The music even sounds almost identical, despite being created by different composers.

On the other hand there are also distinct differences between the films too. In United 93, it was Arab Muslim terrorists that took over a plane to crash it into a Washington landmark for their religious and political ideology. In Captain Phillips it is Somali pirates that take control of a container ship, not for religion but for business; simply to make money. While it would be easy to say that the pirates of Captain Phillips are less sympathetic for having no more nobler cause than to get rich quick, it is actually far from the case. Greengrass only barely humanised his terrorists in United 93. He gave one a hurried farewell phone call and showed the nerves and fear that they were feeling before they took over the plane. However there was no backstory, little motivation and even less differentiation between the attackers.

In Captain Phillips however, Greengrass makes the film absolutely tragic from start to finish and it's not because of the threat to American lives, though Hanks' performance will guarantee to have you shedding a tear by the end. Instead it is because of the four young Somali men who take the boat and then begin to rapidly lose control of the situation before ending up the biggest losers of the film. Whereas United 93 ends with tragedy for all involved, Captain Phillips ends with only tragedy for its Somali underdogs. The unknown actors have come out of nowhere and seared themselves into audiences memories. Their terrifyingly gaunt faces are not the work of Christian Bale and his wonder diets. They feel real and they are heartbreaking. Barkhad Abdi has been singled out for praise by many as the captain of the pirates but his whole crew are incredible, more than holding their own against Hanks. I  don't want to sound racist or offensive but they look like skeletons and their faces like skulls. They are so skinny and desperate looking, so young and inexperienced that you cannot help but sympathise with them. Like in United 93, Greengrass uses unknowns to keep things real with Hanks being the only concession to Hollywood star power.

The fact it all goes so wrong for the pirates and that their leader ends up as a hostage and then finally arrested is as saddening as the effect it is likely to have had on Captain Phillips. Even if there have been accusations that Phillips was not the hero as portrayed, Hanks delivers a heart breaking performance by the end but the death of the desperate young men is never completely overshadowed.

The Somali's feel like real characters. We see their homes, their circumstances, their ruthlessness and the weaknesses. The fact that no one was killed proves perhaps that they were not bloodthirsty animals (or perhaps that they simply were aware of how much each American life is worth). Instead they are absolutely tragic young men completely out of their depth throughout. It might play to mass audiences attraction to seeing third world violence and despair but in amongst the real-time blockbuster thrills is a clear and powerful political message. Contrasting the pirates' homes with the container yards makes for a sickening comparison of first world wealth hoarding and third world desperation. It really does not feel like the Somalis have much choice in what they do in life. They have been stripped of all opportunities and must take something back if they are to survive. The young actors give life and breath to the tragically young men that tangled with the far superior American forces. Captain Phillips is an underdog story of epic proportions where the underdogs never stand a chance.

What did you think of Captain Phillips?

More reviews from I Love That Film:

Saving Mr. Banks 

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Don Jon

Machete Kills, The Conspiracy, Snitch and more

Ender's Game

Sunshine on Leith

How I Live Now

Filth

The Call

Rush

Saving Mr. Banks Review

Is it supercalifragilisticexpialidocious or will it take more than a spoonful of sugar to make this medicine go down? Saving Mr. Banks tells the impossibly boring sounding story of Walt Disney's attempts to get author P.L. Travers to relinquish the rights to her beloved Mary Poppins so that he can make an all singing, all dancing Disney adaptation of the book. Travers is a miserable, jaded and stuck up Emma Thompson and Disney is nice guy Tom Hanks. What a surprise; Saving Mr. Banks is produced by none other than Disney.

Saving Mr. Banks is not a bad film. Thompson peels away the layers until we start to see the sympathetic soul beneath the icy exterior of Travers while the supporting cast of Paul Giamatti and Colin Farrel are superb. When Travers gets lured to Hollywood due to financial problems, Disney attempts to woo her with Sherman brothers songs, delicious sugary treats, a tour of Disneyland and even her own personal driver. Travers hates all the confectionery, the rooms full of Disney merchandise and the sugar coated songs but most of all she hates animation.

With flashbacks to her childhood in Australia humanising this hard to like figure and a developing relationship between (most poignantly) her and her driver played by Giamatti, Disney's film wins you over in the end, much like Disney himself ends up winning Travers over. That is all well and good; a nice little yarn about a woman learning to loosen up and forgive her self and at the same time a sweet, if slightly dubious, message about the power of movies to bring joy to people's lives.

I went home wondering if all this was true or how much the writers made up. So I did some exhaustive and extensive research (well I looked on Wikipedia) and found out that Travers was indeed an adviser to the production for two weeks and one of the real Sherman brothers who got the pleasure of working with her insists she was even worse than how she is portrayed in the film. 'She disapproved of the dilution of the harsher aspects of Mary Poppins' character, felt ambivalent about the music, and so hated the use of animation that she ruled out any further adaptations of the later Mary Poppins novels.'

In Saving Mr. Banks she does not get invited to the premiere but requests a ticket from Disney herself. This is true but instead of crying and tapping her feet and Disney and her parting ways on fond terms, this is what apparently really happened: 'she reportedly approached Disney and told him that the animated sequence had to go. Disney responded by walking away, saying as he did, "Pamela, the ship has sailed."' Whatever happened, she never agreed to let Disney adapt any more of her novels again.

I get the feeling that Travers would have hated Saving Mr. Banks for its sugar coating of her story and I doubt much that Disney would have approved much of the way it softens her. It's a sweet movie with solid performances but forget a spoonful of sugar, take it with a pinch of salt.

More reviews at I Love That Film:

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire

Don Jon

Machete Kills, The Conspiracy, Snitch and more

Ender's Game

Sunshine on Leith

How I Live Now

Filth

The Call

Rush

The Lone Ranger

Trio of Trailers: The World's End, Captain Phillips, The Great Gatsby

Three trailers have caught my attention today and I thought I would share them just in case you haven't seen any of them. They are The World's End, Captain Phillips and The Great Gatsby.

The World's End

The hugely anticipated trailer to the Cornetto trilogy closer is finally here. The World's End has possibly one of my favourite casts ever and almost certainly the best British cast in a very long time. Joining Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are Paddy Considine, Eddie Marsan and Martin Freeman making up the group of mates on an epic pub crawl that just might also be the end of the world. I also noticed a very brief moment of Mark Heap (who was excellent in Pegg, Wright and Frost's TV show Spaced and also appeared with Pegg in the brilliant sketch show Big Train) who is a legend and will no doubt be hilarious. This is the first time I've seen all the shiny eyed people and so the trailer has got me more excited than ever for this.



Captain Phillips

Ever since I heard Paul Greengrass was making another based on real life drama, I was excited. I thought his United 93 was one of the most gripping, terrifying, realistic, horrifying and emotional films I have ever seen. His record with real life events is impeccable with his movies being more like documentary reconstructions than fiction films. Check out Bloody Sunday if you haven't. The story of a real life hijacking of a ship by pirates, Tom Hanks stars as the titular Captain Phillips. I hadn't heard of this story until I read about the film but it sounds like a perfect narrative for a blockbuster and I couldn't think of anyone better than Greengrass to bring it to the screen. Check out the trailer:



The Great Gatsby

Finally I bring you the trailer for Baz Luhrmann's adaptation of The Great Gatsby. Not because this is a new trailer but because I believe it is opening the Cannes Film Festival tonight and also I'm seeing it in Leicester Square tonight. I don't really know what to think about this. I love Leo and I loved Romeo and Juliet but other than that, I'm not a big Luhrmann fan. I know nothing about the book or the older adaptations so am going into this with only the little knowledge I have from the trailer. It certainly looks and sounds pretty!

A Hijacking Trailer

Ahead of Paul Greengrass's take on a true life tale of Somali pirates taking hostages out in the big bad ocean, comes A Hijacking from Denmark. It's from Tobias Lindholm who co-wrote The Hunt which was one of my favourite films of 2012 and stars a familiar face or two from shows like Borgen and The Killing. I'm hopefully seeing this next week and hope it will be as tense and gripping as the trailer below suggests.

A Hijacking tells the story of a Danish cargo ship which is hijacked by Somali pirates and the crew are taken hostage in order that the pirates can negotiate a large ransom for their safe return. As always with hostage negotiations, things are never as simple as they could be with Copenhagen authorities understandably wary of the pirates' motivations and decency and no doubt the pirates not being too trusting of the authorities either.

The stakes are clearly highest for those stuck in the middle of all this with the crew being left at the mercy of both pirates and authorities. With babies back home to get to back to, tensions are bound to run high on the ship.

Paul Greengrass' Captain Phillips is set to star Tom Hanks in a true life tale of hijacking and rescue and is also due out later this year but until then here is the trailer for A Hijacking.



What do you reckon?

CLOUD ATLAS will blow your mind

Cloud Atlas is finally out in the UK today after a long delay since it was released in the US last October. Here is my review of the epic film adaptation of David Mitchell’s best selling novel starring Tom Hanks and Halle Berry.

Six stories over six very different time periods. All put together these stories suggest the interconnectedness of human life both throughout history and across races, genders and boundaries of power and exploitation. Sounds pretentious? Well it should be but Cloud Atlas smashes through boundaries to become one of the biggest and best epics of the century so far.

From the 19th century to the distant post-apocalyptic future, humans appear bound to both each other and to making recurring mistakes, but also to form bonds of kindness and cruelty that can create ripples of consequences through history.

In 1849, a doctor helps an African slave escape aboard a ship; in 1936, a young composer is exploited by his older mentor; in 1973, a journalist comes under threat while trying to expose the dangers of a San Francisco nuclear power plant; in 2012, an editor tries to escape from a nursing home. Then in the future of 2144, a clone-slave in Neo Seoul escapes captivity to reveal the disturbing truth of her society; and finally in a post-apocalyptic future, the survival of civilization on a distant planet is threatened. Somehow these are all connected.

Slavery is present in numerous forms, love blooms in unlikely places and the human capacity for good and evil is explored across time and space. From the slave girls of Neo Seoul to the African slaves of days gone by, exploitation is everywhere, the ability of power to corrupt and for the oppressed to rise up is ever present.

Directors the Wachowski siblings (The Matrix) and Tom Tykwer (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer) pull off the impossible, transforming a book incredibly difficult to adapt into a visually stunning and brilliantly crafted piece of cinema. Some of the parallels and similiarities between the stories are made more obvious here than in the book and it makes for a more streamlined and coherent retelling, easier to follow and promoting themes to the forefront of viewers’ minds.

The choice to have actors taking on a multiplicity of roles is bold and brilliant. Though there are missteps (Tom Hanks' Irish gangster is a notable misfire), the idea that any actor can play any role, whether it be Black, White, Asian, male or female is central to the films thesis and despite the make up failing to hide the true ethnicities of the characters, the point is loud and clearly recieved. We are all the same underneath these labels we have given each other. Some have called it tasteless, but it is a brave and noble idea that on the whole succeeds.

Tom Hanks excels in some roles but dissapoints in others. Ben Whishaw emerges as a stand out, mainly as the young composer, but the entire cast admirably tackle their many roles, sometimes even completely disappearing under the layers of make up. Hugh Grant and Hugo Weaving also make the most of sinister characters, making memorable villains out of minor roles in a number of the stories.

Cloud Atlas is incredibly ambitious, an impossible adaptation that manages to capture the essence of the book and improve it with a streamlined and smart narrative structure. The directors have created breathtaking, visually astounding different worlds, taken a potentially pretentious idea and visualised it on a grand scale, both entertaining and intellectually stimulating.

There may be flaws and it may test some viewers’ patience but Cloud Atlas is an emotional and unforgettable piece of epic cinema.

Rating 4/5

Cloud Atlas is released in the UK on Friday 22nd February 2013. Watch the extended trailer below but be warned, it's nearly as long as the film! 

I Love That Blog Post #10

Get your reading glasses at the ready everybody because  here's another list of excellent blog posts I have read recently.  Please enjoy!

The Droid You’re Looking For has a very cool infographic of Nolan and his collaborators http://tdylf.com/2012/07/03/infographic-the-collaborators-of-christopher-nolan/

Forget spending time with your loved ones, if you had three weeks left of existence, what would be the last films you would wish to watch?  Go tell Kristin at All Eyes on Screen right now!  http://alleyesonscreen.com/2012/07/03/three-final-weeks-of-movies/

Ahead of The Dark Knight Rises, The Movie Blog has all you need to know about Bane http://them0vieblog.com/2012/07/04/the-dark-knight-rises-101-or-tell-me-about-bane/

 

Tyler at Southern Vision has some of Mark Kermode’s very best review rants.  The one on Transformers 3 is absolutely hilarious!  http://magnoliaforever.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/the-very-best-of-the-good-doctor/

Dan at Public Transportation Snob has an interesting top 5 of Tom Hanks performances http://www.ptsnob.com/2012/07/top-5-tom-hanks-performances.html

There must be something in the water.  After I bemoaned modern marketing over at Filmoria the other day, I found this excellent essay from The Movie Blog http://them0vieblog.com/2012/07/13/do-we-see-too-much-of-film-before-its-released-these-days/

HAPPY READING EVERYBODY!!!!  This time next week, I'll be preparing for my wedding so if I go a bit quiet this week and then for another couple of weeks, please don't shun me!