CAPTAIN PHILLIPS - LFF 2013 Day One

Tom Hanks as the freighter captain boarded by Somali pirates.

You can listen to a podcast review of the movie below:

The word to describe the new Tom Hanks-Paul Greengrass true-life thriller CAPTAIN PHILLIPS is "tense".  You get about five minutes of mildly tense chat between a lovely decent husband (Hanks) and wife (Catherine Keener) and then we see him land in Oman to pilot a commercial freighter through perilous Somali waters to the Kenyan coast.  We then get about an hour of petrifying highly tense terror as a band of Somali pirates tries and tries again to board the gigantic freighter, and then another hour of killer tension as the US navy try to save our erstwhile hero, who's now been forced into a large lifeboat with the pirates - the key question, can the Navy Seals end the attack without also killing Phillips as collateral damage? 

There's no comic relief.  No five minute pause for reflection.  No calm waters.  Even if you know how this true-life story works out, I guarantee that Paul Greengrass' handheld up-close filming style will keep you on the edge of your seat.  And when you finally get that moment of catharsis - perhaps the finest ten minutes of acting in Tom Hanks' career - the emotion is overwhelming. 

Is the film perfect? No.  The opening dialogue between husband and wife is hamfisted - so blatantly shoehorning a discussion about tough times in post financial crisis America.  The dialogue on the ship in the opening scenes is also a bit "Basil Exposition", as the crewmates try to take us in babysteps through how a ship like this works.  At one point, if I recall rightly, Tom Hanks even says "walk me through the plan".  But one the film settles into the stride it hits an even-handed complexity and nuance that is truly admirable.  The chief pirate, Muse (Barkhad Abdi) is painted as an intelligent man with few options, boxed into a corner and never likely to benefit from the money he's making - something Phillips calls him out on.  And a particularly touching relationship forms between Phillips and the younger, shoeless pirate. 

Overall, CAPTAIN PHILLIPS is just what you'd expect given the talent attached to it.  Classy, intelligent, brilliantly directed, superbly acted, and deeply immersive.  And a special shout out to cinematographer Barry Ackroyd who takes us to the heart of the action. 

CAPTAIN PHILLIPS has a running time of 134 minutes.

CAPTAIN PHILIPS will be released on October 11th in Australia, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Peru, Portugal, Russia, the UAE, Finland, Iceland, Jamaica, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the USA. It opens on October 18th in France, Brazil, Ecuador, Ireland, Mexico and the UK. It opens on October 25th in the Philippines, Argentina, Denmark and Colombia. It opens on October 31st in Chile and Italy; on November 7th in Switzerland and Italy; on November 10th in Taiwan; on November 15th in Bulgaria and Uruguay; on November 20th in Belgium, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands and Turkey; on November 29th in Japan and on December 5th in Singapore. 

LA diary day 1 - THERE WILL BE BLOOD

Right now LA is sunny but cold and I'm in town for a few days on business. It's a perfect chance to check out some historic cinemas and some new releases that haven't made it to the UK yet. It's perfect testament to the almost visceral impact of THERE WILL BE BLOOD that I was transfixed by it, despite the fact that I'd just come off a 13 hour flight and was running on nearly 24 hours without sleep. (In fairness, the fact that the Arclight on Sunset Boulevard is super-plush, has killer hot dogs and great coffee also helped, and I was pleasantly surpised to see I was paying just $12 as opposed to $25 in London! Seriously, thanks to the dollar depreciation stuff in LA is basically free now.)

Paul Thomas Anderson's new film is, like 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS, a movie that leaves you breathless with its completeness of vision. Every single aspect of the movie has been carefully thought out and the complete work fills you with renewed excitement about the power of the medium. The cinematography, by long-term collaborator Robert Elswit, is great. Just look at the scene where Day-Lewis is silhouetted against burning oil wells at dusk. The production design places us authentically in the grit and grime of the California oil rush of the early 1900s. More than all of this, technically, the supreme achievement of this film is it's sound design. Jonny Greenwood of RADIOHEAD fame provides a score that feels like Ligetti or Bartok. It's insistent, dissonant and jarring, and almost replaces dialogue as the explanatory aural medium for the film.

Daniel Day-Lewis lives and breathes the enigmatic oil man Daniel Plainview. He advertises himself as a plain speaking family man bringing riches to the poor farmers. In reality he is a misanthrope and arch-manipulator. He speaks with an accent from a history book - some say modelled on John Huston. He is mesmerising. The first fifteen minutes of the film see Plainview find his first mineral mine, and then bringing his first wells on-line. There is little dialogue. Plainview seems to succeed by pure force of will, and brutally brushes of any accidental deaths inherent in the dangerous business of prospecting.

After this prologue we meet Plainview in 1911 as he charms his way into ownership of vast oil reserves. He meets his nemesis in a young kid with delusions of being a faith healer. Paul Dano plays Eli Sunday as an irritating over-confident nuisance. Some critics have complained that he doesn't provide a meaty enough foil for Plainview but I disagree. It's fascinating that Plainview is too mean to allow this small irritant to persist and thrive. His sense of reason bristles at the ludicrous church services. But more importantly, his ego cannot cope with another man absorbing the people's interest. The feebleness of Eli Sunday also makes the scene where Plainview beats the crap out of him even more powerful and pathetic.

As for Paul Dano, maybe he was thrust into the role of Eli Sunday with too little preparation time. Maybe his scenes preaching aren't quite convincing. Does he really have the charisma to make us believe that he would found a church? But for every weak scene there's a great scene. One of the best is when the bullied preacher turns on his own father and becomes a bully himself.

If Dano's casting is one problem, I can imagine the final episode of this film striking some as over-the-top and ridiculous. By that point, I was so suckered into this world that I bought every second of it. And I think that is Anderson's real achievement here. He has created a world that seems alien and brutal and that is filled with characters from the Inferno. And yet, it is depicted with such conviction you can't help but take it to heart.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD played Toronto 2007 and will play Berlin 2008. It opened in the US in 2007 and opens in February 2008 in Austrlia, Germany, Portugal, Austria, Brazil, Estonia, Italy, Norway, the UK, Belgium, Argentina, Greece, Portugal, Russia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, France and the Netherlands.