Captain Phillips

In 2009, Somali pirates hijacked an American cargo ship bound for Kenya in the Gulf of Aden. After Captain Richard Phillips (Tom Hanks), along with the rest of his crew, was able to diffuse the immediate situation, he was taken aboard one of the ship's lifeboats and held hostage during a lengthy standoff with the U.S. Navy. With Captain Phillips, director Paul Greengrass takes another major, harrowing recent news story and is able to generate great tension through stark realism as he did to superb effect in United 93.  Hanks has achieved such a level of stardom that now makes it hard for him to disappear into his roles or possibly for an audience to take him seriously (at my showing, there were scenes where crowd members, myself included, laughed at parts that probably weren't intended to be comical), but he nonetheless does an excellent job depicting a career sailor, and particularly shines in the concluding sequences which show his character going into shock. Barkhad Abdi also turns in a fine performance as the affable leader of the Somalis. My one minor gripe (which is very minor considering how well it is shot) is with the length of the lifeboat sequence, which reminded me of the airport scene in Argo where a pivotal climatic scene is being milked for every last ounce of tension despite a widely known outcome.

Green Zone

 The Iraq Wars have not been a popular topic for movie goers, and films with this as their subject have typically failed, but I think I have figured out what it takes to make a good film about these conflicts: the stronger and more obvious the message, the worst it will do. The more obscure or messageless the movie is, the more succesful it will be. Note how obvious message movies failed such as Stop-Loss and In The Valley Of Elah did poorly and how movies like The Hurt Locker, Three Kings, and Jar Head did better. The new Iraq film falls along the the lines of the former. The film opens up in March 2003 on the first night of the Iraq war with Iraqis trying to flee their Baghdad houses amidst the bombings. We jump forward to three weeks later where we begin to follow a warrant officer (Matt Damon, turning up the intensity) who begins to search for WMDs, follow leads from an Iraqi citizen, and pursue a top military target. Along the way he deals with a sketchy Washington pentagon official(Greg Kinnear) and a journalist (Amy Ryan). The film deals with subjects that couldn't be more obvious and plays like they are the film's central conceit: Our government lied to us, leaked faulty information, and there were no WMDs in Iraq! Also the film is helmed by frequent Damon collaborator Paul Greengrass and although his United 93 is a masterpiece and extremely jarring motion picture, I have often been critical of his use of queasy-cam in the last two Bourne movies, and he employs it again here to the same effect. The film is hard to watch and the action is indecipherable. I feel there is a good film in here, but not the way they chose to film or tell it.
**1/2 stars