White Privilege Around the African Horn

Captain Phillips
Directed by Paul Greengrass
Two and One Half Stars

By Rollan Schott

Paul Greengrass' "Captain Phillips" is a taught, well-written thriller about a wholesome white cargo ship captain standing strong in the face of ruthless black pirates. I am not sure this is a movie we need. Indeed it is difficult for a film like this not to be about race in at least some capacity, not in an increasingly progressive American society that is paying more and more attention to the casual racism infecting the most visible cadres of popular culture. Greengrass doesn't seem to mind this being the underlying subject here, but his visceral, combative approach doesn't allow space for the principal dichotomies necessaries to give it any weight.



"Captain Phillips" is, more or less, the true store of Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), the captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama. In 2009 the Alabama was on a trade route around the horn of Africa when it was boarded by Somalian pirates. The hostage crisis took a turn when Captain Phillips boarded one of the vessel's lifeboats with the pirates to get them off of the ship and away from the crew (More on that later), but before the cumbersome lifeboat could make it back to the Somali coastline the pirates were headed off by a massive contingent of American naval forces, and found themselves in a standoff that resulted in the death of three pirates by SEAL Team snipers.

The story was a famous one at the time, a precious example of American international military competence, and made a comeback a few years later when the same SEAL team that had shot three pirates from hundreds of yards away in rough waters also killed Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. But what emerged later were tales of Captain Phillips' reckless behavior throughout the trip. Rumors emerged, and were later confirmed, that Phillips had received numerous warnings of active pirates off of Somalia, and was told to stay at least 600 miles off the coast, an order he ignored, charting a course 300 miles nearer the coast than was advised. In fact, Phillips handling of the pirate situation would eventually provoke a lawsuit by members of the crew. Long story short - by all accounts, Captain Richard Phillips was no hero.

But Greengrass' film is careful to make him heavily sympathetic. He opens with terse introductions to both parties. A brief conversation between Phillips and his wife (Catherine Keener) on their way to the airport wherein they talk about how tough it is to apart so frequently and for so long, and address that one of their children may not be giving his best effort in school - a simple and brief summation of American privilege. Then, in a remote coastal hamlet in Somalia, a gangster arrives to convene a crew for his piracy efforts. The community is hopelessly impoverished, but little time is spent illustrating as much. They need the money, and they've no choice but to steal it. A gaunt local named Muse (Barkhad Abdi) hand-picks his crew. Everyone is desperate for the work, but the job comes with a caveat. Bring back something considerable or else.

This is pretty much the extent of Greengrass' efforts to illustrate the intensely different circumstances these two parties brought to the bridge of the Maersk Alabama. Greengrass doesn't have time for much at all, really, because this tale unfolds so rapidly and with so many developments. It seems the very nature of the story makes it nearly impossible to tell tastefully. It is not that this is not a remarkable story. Not at all. It is that this kind of white privilege and casually racist stereotyping does not at all need to be reinforced or validated in the twenty-first century.

Greengrass has an intensely visceral style of filmmaking. His camera jerks and shutters. It zooms in, then out, then in again. It can be hard to read faces or follow action, because the relentless movement of the camera negates movement within the frame, and robs the film of much momentum. I've long felt that Greengrass is not a very compositionally sound director, which is a pity, because there are performances here that deserve some steady screen space. Hanks is terrific as a rugged, simple man forced to be resourceful in perilous circumstances, but the real revelation here is first time actor Abdi as Muse, who creates a desperate man blinded by the chance at an escape from this destitute beginnings. There are moments late when Muse quietly searches for desperate answers as the odds snowball against him that provide that harshest humanity in the whole of the film.

Perhaps I'm being unfair, condemning "Captain Phillips" for what it isn't. This is a film that does a lot of things well. The back and forth between Phillips and Muse is tremendously compelling, with Phillips talking on eggshells as Muse grows dangerously despairing. The power-struggle between the pirate crew is suspenseful, and Greengrass allows the hostage standoff between the pirates on their hopeless lifeboat and gigantic naval freighters off of its stern to continue until Phillips' exasperation becomes infectious. By the end of the film, I felt like I'd endured an ordeal. Greengrass may have done the base minimum to acknowledge the quality of life in Somalia, but in white-washing Phillips' history he chose to be negligent of the role race played in his film, and for that I cannot recommend it.