Movie Review

Captain Philips, Not worth watching

Paul Greengrass directed "Captain Philips" a mediocre and unexciting movie that portrays in the plot Richard Philips (Tom Hanks), who commands the 'MV Maersk Alabama' container ship with no kind of arms or protection, sailing to Mombasa, Kenya. While in a practice drill for security, the crew is chased by four Somali armed pirates led by Abduwali Muse (Barkhad Abdi). Their first try to attack the Maersk Alabama did not succeed. Although Philips did his best effort to secure the ship, these four pirates come back the next morning and this time succeed and successfully attach their ladder to the Maersk Alabama. Philips comes up with a plan for his crew members to hide in the engine room and allows himself to be captured while offering $30,000 for the ships peace and security. Muse does not accept and instead wants in exchange millions of dollars. Shane Murphy, or first officer of the Maersk Alabama (Michael Chernus), sees that one of the pirate crew members Adan Bilal (Barkhad Abdirahman) has no shoes. Someone in the engine room breaks glass for Bilal to come in and injure himself on his feet. The crew members later threaten to kill Muse, and Nour Najee (Faysal Ahmed) a pirate member accepts to leave only with Philips, beating him and kidnapping Philips on a lifeboat, making him, a prisoner.

The movie as a whole was interesting but mediocre at the same time. There was no excitement. Throughout the movie it was boring. This movie is based on real life events and seeing a man being kidnapped and trying to be brave was lamentable for me to see. It was sad and I felt bad for the man and what happened to him, after all being kidnapped is not exciting. Most of the movie is in Somali language, and reading the subtitles is something needed to do continuously, to understand what is going on. There is lot of yelling especially in Somali language which is really annoying. The movie had some violence especially when Philips is kidnapped and one of the pirate members gets really violent with him. Considering this, the movie is not for all audiences. Not many would be interested. Maybe young adults and older. I saw the movie once and definitely I would not watch it twice. A theme that would fit well with this movie would be, always have arms or protection in hands to always have defense. After watching, the movie gave a dry feeling of why this movie is even worth watching and it did not feel good. Watching the movie and evaluating it, the movie deserves two stars out of five.