2013: The Year in Film: "Captain Phillips" Review

Tom Hanks' quasi-retirement/"producer" phase of the mid-2000's following the relative busts of "The Terminal" and "The Ladykillers" was a bit baffling to some, and it no doubt led to some amnesia among moviegoers as to how much of a powerhouse Hanks can be with the right material. Castaway/Saving Private Ryan/Apollo 13/Philadelphia Hanks was simply as good as any actor in Hollywood not named Daniel Day-Lewis. He was slowly starting to stake a legitimate claim to "greatest actor of all time"-type titles, only to more or less disappear from powerhouse stuff. Given all of that, it was easy to forget just how damn GOOD Hanks could be with the right material and with the right director. So when the ads for "Captain Phillips" directed by Paul Greengrass of 'Bourne' fame started to leak out, I slowly allowed myself to become excited for the return of one of America's screen titans to awards-worthy work.

"Captain Phillips", for those of you who don't know, is a dramatization of the harrowing ordeal of one Richard Phillips, the captain of the S.S. Alabama when she was hijacked by Somali pirates in the spring of 2009, culminating in dramatic rescue by US Navy SEALS several days later.

The Good: Hanks, obviously, is great. Understated and schluppy, his Captain Phillips is a competent but very ordinary man having a very bad day on the job. This is his finest performance since Castaway, and we're really getting vintage Hanks for this one. The film clearly takes its dedication to accuracy very seriously, and the result is a very real feeling and tense film. Aside from Hanks, the best performances are turned in by the Somali hijackers, particularly Barkhad Abdi, who plays the leader of the pirates, named Muse. It's my understanding that the hijackers were portrayed by first time actors and unknowns who were found at open auditions, and it's remarkable that their performances are so good given that we're basically seeing amateurs act across from Tom Hanks. Abdi especially deserves to have a legitimate acting career after the work he turns in here.  The film's plotting and pace are strong as well, with the 2nd half of the movie being incredibly tense, despite the fact that everyone knows exactly how the film ends. That's laudable, you guys.


The Bad: granted, some of this is due to the nature of the story being told, but aside from Hanks' Capt Phillips and Muse, there isn't a single character who's developed beyond an extremely minimal level. On the one hand, that keeps the story self-contained and adds to the tension, but on the other, it makes the world feel false, because we're basically dealing with a bunch of two dimensional fake persons and two actual characters. This is especially true of the military figures once they come into play. The US Navy is basically straight out of the commercial, with hyper-competent badasses just getting stuff done. Look, I know that that's exactly the image the US military is cultivating, but as a consumer of fiction, I'd appreciate a little depth to my stories, guys. The Navy SEALS here might as well be Terminators. They drop in, shoot people, and disappear, with our characters left to pick up the pieces.

All in all, this one is well worth watching. Hanks turns in a powerhouse performance of one man's harrowing ordeal, and personifying the hijackers was a nice and welcome touch. Ultimately, this is an incredibly tense flick that feels much shorter than its hefty runtime. There are no winners and losers when it comes to Somalia, and if this flick can spur you to do a little reading of your own, that's a definite plus.

8/10. Featuring a great central performance and some tense plotting but ultimately too hollow to reach true greatness. It certainly is great to have Tom Hanks back, and personally, I'm rooting for Abdi to have a long and lucrative career.

2012: The Year in Film: "Cloud Atlas" Review

My original goal was to finish the novel before seeing this film, but I unfortunately failed at said goal, as I fail at many goals, including but not limited to "reviewing movies within a reasonable time frame of seeing said movies". Sigh.  So I caught this one a few weeks back, and to be quite honest, my procrastination in bringing you this review has less to do with "being lazy" and more to do with "processing what the hell this movie is".  The acclaimed novel by David Mitchell was said to be un-film-able, as it features 6 distinct storylines only tangentially related and separated by time, space, characters, genre, style and language.  The sections span from the 1840s to the distant future and are only minimally related to each other.  For example, in one section a character is reading a diary/travel journal published by a character in an earlier section.  With this format, I was honestly more curious than anything else to how this movie could actually be executed.

In step the Wachowski Brothers, best known for creating the Matrix films and German director Tom Tykwer, probably best known for "Run Lola Run", to write and direct this adaptation.  This film has been a passion project of sorts for this crew, who managed to finance this flick outside of the studio system and make the most expensive independently financed film in the history of movies.  This film makes a lot of pretty daring and risky moves.  First, rather than keep the sections of the story separate and arranged by time and place, the film smashes the sections into short segments, jumping from one time and group of characters to another without much of what seems like rhyme or reason.  Second, they use the same actors to depict different characters in each different story, irregardless of ethnicity or gender.  Which can get confusing.  



Ultimately, this is a film that succeeds a lot more than it really has any business doing.  It's a honker at 2 hrs 45 minutes, and often confusingly and inexplicably shifts setting and tone abruptly.  Some settings and characters are significantly more effective than others, but the story in each of the sections develops somewhat simultaneously, building towards an emotionally effective and soaring crescendo of an ending.  Visually, this is an impressive film.  It looks amazing, and each section effectively differentiates itself from the others through color and cinematography.  Despite being 6 short films smashed together into one large film, there IS an overreaching narrative that really comes through in the last act. 

The acting is strong.  Tom Hanks, especially, shows everyone why he's such a highly regarded actor, as he hasn't given us much reminder of that as of late.  Jim Broadbent and Jim Sturgess are other highlights among the cast.  Some characters are more interesting and compelling than others, but considering what the cast was tasked with doing, the fact that this film makes ANY sense at all is a testament to the talent of everyone involved.  The directing is strong.  Each section retains a distinct feel despite being rather randomly (at times) smashed together with the others. 

This is a flick that's often confusing and will have you checking your watch more than once as you try and figure out exactly where the hell we are going with this.  The visuals, insane editing, strong directing and strong performances make it worth watching, but the first two hours of the film can be frustrating.  However, the last half hour of this flick is straight up great.  It's as good as anything else I've seen in the movies this year, and alone makes this flick one worth watching.  The conclusion is emotionally soaring and downright heart-rending as the story and theme all comes crashing down throughout the separate narratives.  This film isn't quite as good or deep as it would like to be, but it's ultimately a rewarding, powerful and worthwhile film experience.  Well worth a watch, if downright bizarre. 

8/10.