Just got home from watching Captain
Phillips, starring Tom Hanks. Bottom line –
really exciting movie that grabs you early and doesn’t let you go. Tom Hanks
does a great job, creating a competent, sympathetic hero. However, the men who
play the Somali pirates are also more than just cardboard villains. We get at
least some understanding about how these complex, varied men try to survive in
a world stacked against them. The action gets rolling quickly with an adequate minimum
of exposition and you stay tense, on the edge of your seat, despite knowing
(sort of) how it’s going to end, because it’s based on a true story.
That fact has led to reviews critical
that the story has been “enhanced” by Hollywood. Yeah, okay. So? It’s a movie,
and even movies based on true stories, can’t be expected to be 100% accurate;
they are, after all, only based on a
true story, a story told from, usually, a single point of view (which means
it’s only partially accurate in any case). It’s a movie, not history (which has
multiple points of view, too), and movies, with the exception of some
documentaries, are, by definition, stories.
Even the most exciting life is mundane
most of the time – making a movie of it would require the judicious use of facts
that would reduce its level of truth. If Captain Phillips isn’t a completely accurate telling of what happened
(and I certainly don’t know, one way or the other), it is an exciting one. So
don’t let that keep you from enjoying a terrific movie, a compelling story, and
a good actor carrying the load. Best movie I’ve seen in a long time, worth your
time and dollars, and probably better on the big screen than your TV.
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