Captain Phillips(2013)

Plot Summary

• Captain Phillips is a 2013 American biographical action thriller directed by Paul Greengrass and written by Billy Ray. Based on Richard Phillips's 2010 memoir A Captain's Duty, co-written with Stephan Talty, the film depicts the 2009 hijacking of the MV Maersk Alabama by a crew of Somali pirates, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in over two hundred years. Tom Hanks plays Captain Richard Phillips, and Barkhad Abdi plays Muse, the Somali pirate captain who takes him hostage. The cast also includes Michael Chernus, David Warshofsky, Corey Johnson, and Yul Vazquez. The Somali cast, which includes Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, and Mahat M. Ali, was drawn from a casting search among Somali-American communities in Minneapolis. The score is by Henry Jackman. The film premiered at the New York Film Festival on September 20, 2013, and was released theatrically on October 11, 2013, by Columbia Pictures. It grossed $218.8 million worldwide against a $55 million budget. At the 86th Academy Awards, it received six nominations, including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actor for Abdi. Abdi also won the BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor. Core themes include duty, survival, power, globalization, and what it means to be indispensable in the machinery of larger forces.  The film is for audiences drawn to taut biographical thrillers grounded in real events.