Tom Hanks navigates 'Captain Phillips' to first-class reviews

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Actors Rooney Mara, left, Joaquin Phoenix and Amy Adams attend the 51st annual New York Film Festival closing night screening of “Her.” (Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

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Actress Amy Adams attends the 51st annual New York Film Festival closing night screening of “Her.” (Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

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Actress Olivia Wilde attends the 51st annual New York Film Festival closing night screening of “Her.” (Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

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Actress Rooney Mara attends the 51st annual New York Film Festival closing night screening of “Her.” (Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

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Actress Tilda Swinton attends a screening of “Only Lovers Left Alive” during the 51st annual New York Film Festival. (Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)

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Director-actor Ralph Fiennes speaks onstage at the Gala Tribute to Ralph Fiennes during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Stephen Lovekin / Getty Images)

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Actress Parker Posey attends the “Dazed and Confused” 20th anniversary screening during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images)

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Actor Anthony Rapp attends the “Dazed and Confused” 20th anniversary screening during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images)

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Director-designer Agnes B. speaks during the New York Film Festival “Director Agnes B., “My Name Is Hmmm...” panal discussion during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Robert Redford attends the “All Is Lost” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival. Redford stars as a man lost at sea in the adventure film. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Actress Connie Britton attends the “All Is Lost” premiere at the New York Film Festival. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Actor Zachary Quinto attends the New York Film Festival screening of “All Is Lost.” Robert Redford is the sole actor in the J.C. Chandor movie.

(Charles Sykes / Invision / AP)

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Actor Bruce Dern and his daughter, actress Laura Dern, attend the “Nebraska” premiere at the film fest. Bruce Dern stars as Woody Grant in the movie. (Astrid Stawiarz / Getty Images)

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Actor Will Forte attends the “Nebraska” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival. Forte plays an estranged son in the film.

(Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Actor Chiwetel Ejiofor and actress Lupita Nyong’o attend the “12 Years a Slave” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival. Ejiofor stars in the new film by director Steve McQueen. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Actress Sarah Paulson attends the “12 Years a Slave” premiere. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Director Steve McQueen and Madonna attend the “12 Years a Slave” premiere. (Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images)

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Actress Alfre Woodard attends the premiere of “12 Years a Slave” at the festival. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Kristen Wiig, left, Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor attend the Centerpiece gala presentation of “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty” during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Stephen Lovekin / Getty Images)

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Actor Adam Scott attends the Centerpiece gala presentation of “The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty” during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Mike Coppola / Getty Images)

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Actor Sean Penn attends the New York Film Festival premiere of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” (Charles Sykes / Invision/Associated Press)

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Actor Joaquin Phoenix attends the “Immigrants” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival City. (Robin Marchant / Getty Images)

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Actor Benicio del Toro speaks to the media at the premiere of “Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian” during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Director Fernando Eimbcke attends the premiere of “Jimmy P: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian” at the 51st New York Film Festival. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Actors Mahat M. Ali, from left, Tom Hanks and Faysal Ahmed attend the opening night gala world premiere of “Captain Phillips” during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Jamie McCarthy / Getty Images)

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Actors Adam Driver, left, Naomi Watts and Charles Grodin attend the opening night gala world premiere of “Captain Phillips” at the New York Film Festival. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Actress Lindsay Duncan and actor Jeff Goldblum attend the “Le Week-End” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Actor Bill Nighy, from left, filmmaker Richard Curtis and actor Domhnall Gleeson attend the “About Time” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Actress Isabelle Huppert, left, and director Catherine Breillat attend the “Abuse Of Weakness” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Taylor Hill / Getty Images)

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Cate Blanchett speaks onstage at the gala tribute to the actress during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Michael Loccisano / Getty Images)

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Actress Carey Mulligan attends the “Inside Lleywn Davis” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. (Evan Agostini / Invision/ AP)

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Actor Garrett Hedlund attends the “Inside Lleywn Davis” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. (Rob Kim / Getty Images)

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Actor John Goodman attends the “Inside Lleywn Davis” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. (Craig Barritt / Getty Images)

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Directors Joel Coen, left, and Ethan Coen attend the premiere of “Inside Llewyn Davis” at the New York Film Festival. (Evan Agostini / Invision/Associated Press)

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Chinese director Zhangke Jia, left, and his wife, actress Tao Zhao, attend a screening of “Touch of Sin” at the New York Film Festival. (Evan Agostini / Invision/Associated Press)

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Producer Marianne Bower, left, director Nancy Buirski and actor Michael Stuhlbarg attend the premiere of “Afternoon of a Faun: Tanaquil Le Clercq” at the New York Film Festival. (Jemal Countess / Getty Images)

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Magicians Penn and Teller attend the “Tim’s Vermeer” premiere during the 51st New York Film Festival. (Craig Barritt / Getty Images)

By Oliver Gettell

Oct. 11, 2013 10:12 AM PT

Much like the captain of the cargo ship Maersk Alabama, who was rescued by the U.S. Navy after his ship was set upon by Somali pirates in April 2009, “Captain Phillips” appears to have been in good hands. With Tom Hanks in front of the camera and Paul Greengrass behind it, the drama based on the notorious hijacking is earning excellent reviews.

The Times’ Kenneth Turan writes, “this film does an impeccable job of creating and tightening the narrative screws. The result is so propulsive that you may find yourself looking at your watch not out of boredom but because you’re not sure how much more tension you can stand.” Greengrass, a veteran of fact-based dramas (“United 93,” “Bloody Sunday”), “has also managed to include some subtle but unmistakable social commentary” and delivers “a film with an emotional quotient that manages to combine the dynamics of human behavior under stress with our affinity for the nuts and bolts of realistic action.”

Meanwhile, in the title role as the besieged ship’s captain, Hanks gives an exceptional performance, Turan said. “As good as Hanks has been in the past, there are moments here, especially near the conclusion, that are deeper and more emotional than anything we’ve seen from this actor before.”

PHOTOS: Tom Hanks | Career in pictures

In the New York Times, Manohla Dargis says “Captain Phillips” “shakes you up first with its style and then with its ideas.” The film “begins as something of a procedural about men at work and morphs into a jittery thriller even as it also deepens, brilliantly, unexpectedly, into an unsettling look at global capitalism and American privilege and power.” Greengrass, Dargis writes, “works you over like a deep-tissue pugilist with smash cuts, racing cameras and a propulsive soundtrack so you feel the urgency as well as see it.”

As for Hanks, “There’s something so unforced about him that it can seem as if he’s not delivering a performance, just being Tom Hanks. This feeling of authenticity, however well honed and movie made, dovetails with Phillips’s gruff likability to create a portrait of a man trying to keep himself, his crew and his ship together even as the world he knew comes violently undone.”

The Boston Globe’s Ty Burr says Greengrass, “in his steadiest, most focused work to date, creates an aura of urgency so compelling, so rooted in detail, that we temporarily forget what we know and hold our breaths for two-plus hours of tightening suspense.” Burr also agrees that the film offers more than patriotic-leaning action fare: “Greengrass has made something more complex than a flag-waver, although it can and will be taken as simply that by some. ‘Captain Phillips’ both stands in awe of the firepower and efficiency of America’s military and asks you to think about how it might look from the other side.”

PHOTOS: Captain Phillips on screen and in real life

In terms of acting, Hanks delivers “one of his more reined-in performances,” and newcomer Barkhad Abdi, playing the Somali pirate leader, “beautifully complements” him.

Jocelyn Noveck of the Associated Press, invoking “United 93,” writes that “Greengrass has produced another expertly crafted, documentary-style film based on a real event.” Hanks “delivers some of his finest work here, playing the Everyman role he does so well, in this case a fairly ordinary guy forced by circumstance to be a hero. And yet ‘Captain Phillips’ is a remarkably unsentimental film, with an emotional catharsis coming only at the very end, when we’re all ready for some kind of release. This is where Hanks digs deepest as an actor.”

Among the few dissenting voices is Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir, who concedes that the film “is an intense and claustrophobic maritime adventure” and “may well earn Tom Hanks the Oscar nomination he’s so clearly striving for. But, he continues, “not far below the surface ‘Captain Phillips’ is also an unpleasant and uncomfortable experience, a film that’s not entirely happy with itself .… [A]s cinema it plays a lot like a knockoff of ‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ without the same ambition and scale and with dramatically lower stakes.”

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