Review Roundup: Captain Phillips Sails into Theaters with High Expectations

Captain Phillips is a multi-layered examination of the 2009 hijacking of the U.S. container ship Maersk Alabama by a crew of Somali pirates. It is - through director Paul Greengrass's distinctive lens - simultaneously a pulse-pounding thriller, and a complex portrait of the myriad effects of globalization.

The film focuses on the relationship between the Alabama's commanding officer, Captain Richard Phillips (two time Academy Award-winner Tom Hanks), and the Somali pirate captain, Muse (Barkhad Abdi), who takes him hostage. Phillips and Muse are set on an unstoppable collision course when Muse and his crew target Phillips' unarmed ship; in the ensuing standoff, 145 miles off the Somali coast, both men will find themselves at the mercy of forces beyond their control. (c) Columbia Pictures

Let's see what the critics have to say...

Richard Corliss, TIME: "Creating zigzag lines of screen conflict, Greengrass floods the moviegoer's eye with enormous amounts of assimilable detail. Those gifts are on offer here too, but in a scenario lacking in suspense. You wait not for Phillips to be saved but for the young pirates to crack. They are four kids in a lifeboat against the world's most powerful navy. What's at stake is the boys' doom, not the captain's life."

Dana Stevens, Slate: "In addition to being an action-adventure about captors and hostages, Captain Phillips is a tragedy about the ruinous consequences of global capitalism. The would-be pirates may have it unimaginably worse than the middle-class Phillipses, but everyone we see onscreen is just a working man doing what he feels he has to do to get by. (And given that Keener's character disappears after that first scene, never to be replaced by another female face, I do mean "he.")"

Nick Schager, The Village Voice: "...Greengrass' film - written by Billy Ray and based on the real Phillips' memoir- proves itself interested only in flat expository dialogue, with every uttered word chosen to impart vital plot information, character detail, and simplistic First-vs.-Third World commentary. That conversational falseness is matched by the United 93 and The Bourne Identity filmmaker's usual handheld cinematography, which bobs and weaves with a shakiness that aims for you-are-there docu-realism, but too often gets in the way of the drama at hand."

David Edelstein, Vulture: "The triumph of the actor and the director, Paul Greengrass, is that, over the next two hours, we come to feel as deeply for Muse as for his hostage played by all-American nice-guy superstar Tom Hanks. Captain Phillips is not just a liberal-guilt movie."

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: "Director Paul Greengrass creates an aura of urgency so compelling, so rooted in detail, that we temporarily forget what we know and hold our breaths for two-plus hours of tightening suspense. The movie simultaneously stands in awe of the firepower and efficiency of America's military and asks you to think about how it might look from the other side."

Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post: "Hanks, who has made something of an art of playing real-life characters, submerges his usual Everyman charm and instead plays up his Everyman blandness, allowing Phillips's sober, quick-thinking character to emerge through behavior rather than stirring speeches or swashbuckling set pieces. The result is a study in movement and action that is as purely cinematic as "Gravity," a film that may be more far-reaching in its location and visuals, but portrays isolation, dire straits and the wages of Manifest Destiny with similar white-knuckled intensity."

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: "As the back and forth between Phillips and Muse continues through more tense permutations than it is possible to list - one man determined to save and protect his crew, the other focused on getting the payday this has all been about - they come to have a wary and grudging kind of understanding of the profound ways their lives differ.All these strands come together when an exasperated Phillips says to Muse, "There's gotta be something other than being a fisherman or kidnapping people," and the Somali replies after a beat, "Maybe in America." It's yet another moment to ponder and savor in this altogether exceptional film."

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times: "Barkhad Abdi, a Somali new to acting, is up to the task of sharing scene after scene with Hanks. Abdi's Muse is the unquestioned leader of the pirates, verbally sparring with Phillips as the captain acquiesces to demands while trying to keep his crew hidden and figure out a way to contact help. After a number of tense confrontations aboard the ship, the pirates and Phillips exit the ship in a 28-foot capsule with poor ventilation and limited supplies. It feels like a death trap."

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