Meanwhile, pirate captain Muse (Barkhad Abdi) and his crew member Najee (Faysal Ahmed) compete for power, disagreeing frequently on what they should do with Phillips. The pirates hijack Phillips's ship and take him hostage, turning the routine trip into an aggressive invasion. Phillips (Tom Hanks) is transporting cargo on the Maersk Alabama when the ship is boarded by armed Somali pirates. Richard Phillips is the core of the film. Hanks would of course pull off a similarly believable and understated hero performance for Clint Eastwood in 2016’s Sully, the perfect movie the pair with Captain Phillips for a Hanks double-feature.Captain Phillips is a dramatic recreation of a real hijacking in 2009, and as the title suggests, Capt. Other actors may have played up Phillips’ defiance in the face of his captors, going for big Oscar-worthy moments, but Hanks kept things real in his depiction of the captain, making the film seem all the more authentic. Hanks’ particular Everyman qualities, so vital to his screen presence, served him especially well in Captain Phillips, as he depicted an ordinary, non-heroic man forced to deal with a harrowing situation. He was equally perfect for a role like Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, playing an iconic figure in a sensitive and intelligent way. With his modest approach to playing remarkable men, Hanks was perfect for a role like astronaut Jim Lovell in Apollo 13. Hanks has played a wide range of roles during the course of his long career, tackling everything from comedies to dramas to science-fiction, but the star has made a particular specialty of portraying real-life heroes. So it's a really common tactic that's been used throughout history. And also they're far more nimble than a great big ship which takes a long time to turn and evade them. It's called a cutting out action, and it's basically, you put your crew in the smaller vessels, they can overwhelm a larger ship by coming in at multiple sides. So the way the Somali pirates are attacking here, using small boats to go after a big one, is historically how a lot of pirates do overtake larger vessels. It's remarkable that a small pirate crew managed to climb on board the ship, when you've got the deck 13 meters above sea level, they just didn't think it would be possible. However, drowning people will do this, if you go into the water and rescue somebody who's drowning, they will just climb on top of you and push you under trying to get up above the water. Now this is obviously a fight scene, of the two men fighting each other. But he does jump into the sea as is depicted. I think that's a bit of elaboration by the filmmakers there. In this film he asked to urinate, to go out and that's how he makes his escape. I mean in reality he was in there for five days with these people, so you can imagine the horror of living in there. So you have to imagine how stuffy it is inside one of those lifeboats. Somali pirates, especially on hearing that they're American, definitely wanted more. They have elaborated a bit by saying, “Don't point the gun at him, point the gun at me.” But they really did offer thirty thousand dollars, so that's quite a substantial amount of money you would think. This is taken from Captain Phillips’ book. And from what I understand, the way the Somali pirates would attack, initially they were just trying to ward off fishermen from their coastline, then they worked out they could actually make more money by capturing passing ships than they could fishing in the first place, after their fishing grants have been decimated, so these people have been forced into this. Broken English, cause it’s not their first language, but that communication is really important. … And obviously they're speaking English, which is what they would have done. Those men are local Somali actors and they look it. What is also really nice about this film is those men. Check out Lawrence’s remarks in the space below (starting around the 9:13 mark of the clip): She says the movie gets it right when it comes to the pirates’ tactics in boarding a larger ship, and also says the movie is spot-on when it comes to depicting the dangers of rescuing drowning people. The expert praises the movie for using real Somali actors, while also giving the film high marks for taking its dialog straight from Captain Phillips’ book. In a video for History Hit, comedian, podcaster and history presenter Iszi Lawrence declares that Captain Phillips does stick close to the facts in its depiction of Somali pirates and their methods for attacking a much larger ship. Ten years after Hanks’ Captain Phillips joined the star’s long rundown of hit movies, a pirate expert has revisited the film with an eye toward breaking down its authenticity.
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