Movie review

Captain Phillips Movie Review

With a crew of 23, the Maersk Alabama was a ship carrying 17,000 tons of cargo on its way to Mombasa, Kenya. On April 8, 2009, four Somali pirates (Barkhad Abdi, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, and Barkhad Abdirahman Bilal), armed with guns, hijacked the ship. Having received training on this very situation earlier, 15 crew members hid in a secure room and the rest of the crew that wasn’t in the room, fired flares. The pirates took 2 crew members hostage in an attempt to get the crew to give them money and supplies. They went to look for the rest of the crew and one of the pirates cut his foot on glass the crew members had left out on purpose. The crew took the lead pirate hostage in order to attempt a negotiation but the rest of the pirates took Captain Phillips (Tom Hanks) hostage. In response, the crew alerts the Navy (Max Martini, and Rey Hernandez).

The theme of the story is things happen. The setting of the movie is present day, give or take a few years. The Maersk Alabama was getting a little too close to the Somalian coast which it was warned not to do. It wasn’t a big surprise that pirates would take over the ship. It shows that things will happen and there are ways to be prepared and sometimes there aren’t.

I would recommend this movie to people who like a exciting plot line and movies based on true stories. The whole thing was one big thriller and very informative as well.

I had heard of Captain Phillips from watching the Oscars a couple years ago when it was nominated for many awards. Even with all the hype I still didn’t know what it was about. After watching the movie it felt like I had seen it before because the characters were so familiar. Overall Captain Phillips was very interesting and was a thriller at every scene.

I would rate the movie a 4/5. Mostly all of the scenes were packed with excitement and at some points I was kind of scared. Some scenes however were mediocre and a bit boring. Maybe that’s just my short attention span but I felt like some of them lacked that something that made the other scenes pop. Balance is key in a film like that but I thought it was kind of boring nonetheless.