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Paul Greengrass's "Captain Phillips" is based on the harrowing experience of Captain Richard Phillips who was held hostage by Somali pirates in 2009. Greengrass skillfully took the helm and created an outstanding action thriller that would satisfy mature audiences who favor intelligent suspense thrillers like the Bourne series and young viewers who are more attuned to superhero action-packed movies like Iron Man.
However, if we forgo the real-life events in "Captain Phillips," and scrutinize the film on an ideological level, the film tackles a more political issue.
“Captain Phillips” revolves around the captive as the “innocent victim,” and the villains as “soulless amoral individuals” whose only agenda is to steal money and they have no qualms about taking human lives to accomplish their goals. It is the classic template of the “evil” preying on the “good.” Luckily, Greengrass managed to insert certain scenes and dialogues to make the audience understand the motivation of the so-called “soulless captors.” Still, the audience only gets to see snippets of the Somali side, but without those snippets, “Captain Phillips” could have easily been simplistically black and white, literally and figuratively.
