Captain Phillips

Paul Greengrass narrows rather than widens in the second half: the boarding ends early and the story moves into a covered lifeboat and stays there. The result is a long stretch of four men and one hostage in a small hull, the resolution coming from a naval machine rather than the captain outthinking anyone. What the hero manages at the end is endurance. The four pirates came from a 2011 open call at the Brian Coyle Community Center in Minneapolis, where more than seven hundred people turned up. Barkhad Abdi was driving a limousine and saw the notice on local television. Greengrass forbade him to meet Tom Hanks until their characters confront one another, so the wariness during the boarding is literal, and the line “I am the captain now” was Abdi’s own. Nine weeks were shot off Malta aboard the Alexander Maersk, a ship identical to the Alabama; the medic treating Phillips at the close is a serving Navy corpsman, Danielle Albert. A good fit if you accept open sea traded for one boat and endurance instead of action. Not a fit if you want the crew’s account weighed too: sailors sued Maersk saying Phillips’s insistence on speed and earnings brought the ship within two hundred and fifty miles of Somalia, a dispute the film leaves out.