Hanks is the casting coup here, and anchors (forgive the pun) the film with the sense of a normal, modest everyman who is in over his head.

| Sep 14, 2023

The Navy SEALS procedural is a bit of a jumble even as it comfortingly demonstrates American competence in the face of a standoff. Still, it's the captain's passion that gives the movie its emotional intensity.

| Feb 22, 2019

My heart was in my mouth throughout. It is nail-bitingly exciting, even if you know the outcome, and I think I can safely say it's a better film than the one I thought I was going to see.

| Sep 5, 2018

... this high-stakes, visceral drama that allows the audience to experience the myriad emotions at the same time as the characters. It captures what is truly remarkable about the human spirit in times of peril.

| Original Score: A | Sep 6, 2017

The film's real muscle - intelligently never over-flexed - is as an allegory in the balance of global power and the value of life.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Sep 6, 2017

It seems strange to say that an actor as awarded and acclaimed as Tom Hanks is still capable of surprising us. But he does in 'Captain Phillips,' which is one of the best films of the year.

| Jun 19, 2016

[W]e're carried along not just by the momentum of events, but by the precision with which they're depicted.

| Feb 6, 2014

The disappointing aspect to Captain Phillips is that it doesn't go beyond action movie conventions.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 21, 2013

Over and over in this movie we hear variations on the phrase "everything's going to be OK." It's just impossible to head out of the theater and back into the wider world believing that's actually true.

| Dec 10, 2013

We're in the steady hands of Paul Greengrass, a director fully aware that convincing crisis stories involve conflicting interests and passions.

| Original Score: A- | Dec 9, 2013

While "Captain Phillips," to its credit, honors the pirates with more back-story, and they evolve as characters ...the end still lands squarely in a Hollywood space.

| Nov 12, 2013

This is what piracy is now really like. In truth, it was probably always like this.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 25, 2013

There is still an authenticity to the performances that mannered writing cannot undo.

| Oct 24, 2013

For all its action aesthetics and nail-biting, gut-wrenching tension, this is on some level a film about globalisation, about what happens when the paths of the very poor and the very rich intersect in the crossfire of world economics.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 21, 2013

A ruthless, ripped-from-the-headlines seafaring thriller with a vintage turn from Tom Hanks.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 17, 2013

A film in which many exciting things happen on an actual working ship out in open water - and yet the movie is uncompelling.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Oct 17, 2013

This is both Hanks's and Greengrass's best and sturdiest work in a decade; a film that feels less written, acted and shot than smelted, fused and riveted.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 17, 2013

Mostly adapted from the Captain's memoir Captain Phillips is conversely taut and slack; culturally savvy and naive; politically astute and manipulative; emotionally sincere and embarrassingly overwrought.

| Original Score: 2.5 | Oct 16, 2013

The entire performance is one of the greatest in Hanks' prolific, varied career - a role that gives him a massive arc and the opportunity to show great range.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 14, 2013

Director Paul Greengrass and cinematographer Barry Ackroyd create a vivid, insider's look at life at sea and how a crew of twenty did their best to elude their would-be captors.

| Original Score: 2.1/2 | Oct 11, 2013