Captain Phillips

Captain Phillips

Rating 8 out of 10

Movies about real events can be tough.  Especially recent real events where the ending was well publicized.  It can be tough to make a two hour movie interesting when you already know how it ends. Director Paul Greengrass does a good job of keeping the story moving along and interesting.  Greengrass did the very underrated movie United 93 back in 2006.  If you haven't seen it I highly recommend it.  You also can't go wrong by putting Tom Hanks in your movie.  He is just fantastic in everything he does. He is fantastic here also.

There is an area around the horn of Africa off of Somali that has been a treacherous stretch of water.  Somali pirates would come out to the big boats with guns and hijack them holding for ransom.  For a reason I will never understand these boats did not arm themselves with anything stronger than water cannons that would shoot high pressure water onto the incoming boats.  I would have had 50 caliber machine guns mounted on the sides of the boats to send these thugs to the bottom of the sea.

Four heavily armed pirates attack the Maersk Alabama US container ship and take over.  They stay wacked out on the drugs they chew on and are not very reasonable as you might guess.  Captain Phillips (Hanks) does his best to calm them down and protect his crew. When things start going bad they take Captain Phillips as a hostage and it's up to the Navy Seals to save the day.

If you don't know what happens I won't tell you here and would suggest you not find out until you see the movie.  This is a well made movie that will keep you entertained.