Were an Academy Award for best actor to be dished out on the strength of five intense minutes, then bookmakers would probably stop taking bets on the likelihood of Tom Hanks winning his third Oscar in March next year. At 134 minutes, Captain Phillips is a long film, and in the title role, Hanks is splendid throughout. But it is at the end that he really pulls out all the stops, and when you see it — as you should — you will understand how and why.
Captain under fire: Tom Hanks in an Oscars-worthy performance as Captain Rich Phillips takes on Somali Pirates
As the ever-generous Hanks would doubtless be the first to concede, however, even greater plaudits belong to the picture’s British director, Paul Greengrass. It is not easy to wring maximum suspense from a true story to which we already know the ending, but Greengrass managed it with United 93 — the tale of the hijacked 9/11 flight that crashed in Pennsylvania — and he pulls it off even more memorably here.
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