On Captain Phillips

From his first feature in 2002, Bloody Sunday, Paul Greengrass has been a director willing to challenge dominant political ideologies, especially in his adopted USA. His two contributions to the continuing Jason Bourne narrative, The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) are critical of America’s foreign and domestic approach to terrorism, as is Green Zone (2010). All three of those films were unafraid to ask questions of how America has gone about protecting itself against terrorism and defending their interests abroad. Bloody Sunday, perhaps Greengrass’ most challenging film, deals with the Irish Civil rights movement and the violence that surrounded it. Again, an explicitly political film. Without going into much detail on these films, this is simply to say that Greengrass, building on his journalistic routes, is unafraid to create critical, demanding pieces of cinema.

United 93 (2006) and the recently released Captain Phillips see changes to this trend. Captain Phillips, like United 93 focuses on an act of terrorism against America. The former addressed such a powerfully emotive event that Greengrass chose, wisely, to tell a very intimate story surrounding 9/11. United 93 doesn’t directly address the issue of the terrorists and instead tells a story of bravery. In this way it is an understandably patriotic film. Five years was not long enough to criticise or question events surrounding 9/11 and it took a few more years for films like Zero Dark Thirty (2012) to explicitly question America’s tactics surrounding 9/11.

More than being patriotic, Captain Phillips is jingoistic and Greengrass’ most one-sided film. This is less understandable than in his treatment of 9/11. Many audiences outside of America will be unfamiliar with the story. Unusually, we are shown the Somali pirates as more than just one-dimensional terrorists, but their representation is untidy; uncertain, unorganised and fractured as oppose to the determined, professional and tactically astute Americans. The message is not subtle (an incredibly blunt and embarrassing piece of dialogue early on supports this); America is a dominant world power and any provocation toward them will be impassively dealt with. While these may be accurate representations when dealing with Somali piracy, it does not hide the fact that this is Greengrass’ least provocative film.

Yet, the filmmaking on display here is impressive. The direction is confident and technically astounding. There are shots of immense claustrophobia and some of real beauty. The tracking shot that follows the Navy SEALS from the air to the sea is stirring. Tom Hanks, surrounded largely by a cast new to acting is remarkable; his performance throughout is flawless and the final scene, whether you find the jingoism grating or not, is emotionally draining and shows the power that Hanks possesses as an actor. Greengrass’ talents as a director are only getting sharper, but Captain Phillips perhaps displays a dulling in his political energy.