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“Captain Phillips” and Hollywood’s New Navy SEAL Cult | TIME.com

Some hard facts: There is no Santa Claus or Easter Bunny, and the Navy SEALs are not all-powerful. We learned that much from last weekend’s aborted SEAL raid on an al Shabab terrorist’s compound in Somalia. The failure of the operation to capture Abdulkadir Mohamed Abdulkadir—due to the unexpected presence of women and children, surprisingly fierce resistance, or some combination of the two—proved that our special forces do not in fact have supernatural powers. Not every raid is Abbottabad.

In Hollywood, however, the narrative of SEAL omnipotence is alive and well. Case in point is the new thriller “Captain Phillips,” which opens today. The film tells the true story of an American ship captain who was kidnapped by Somali pirates in 2009, and ultimately freed after a long ordeal by the lethal witchcraft of the U.S. military. It’s a riveting and harrowing movie—and while it doesn’t purport to offer complete factual accuracy, has an attention to detail that gives Captain Richard Phillips’s nightmare an unsettlingly realistic feel. You feel like you’re the one who’s been kidnapped.