The Navy took care of Captain Phillips, but here's the heartbreak (or, here are the heartbreaks). When too many hours in a hot and stinking lifeboat end with three shot teenagers spurting blood all over your blindfolded self, the last defenses leave and you collapse. No matter his training, his experience, his talents, his education. The boys' visions of a Somali easy street went dark.Ĭaptain Phillips went into shock. A team of Navy SEALs set their high-powered automatic weapons' night-vision sights and, with clear shots of the three remaining boys, they fired. The lead pirate left the lifeboat to negotiate. The basic story is the same as when, in 2009, four young pirates boarded Maersk Alabama and took its captain hostage on one of the ship's lifeboats. The movie does movie things to keep suspense alive for two hours and 14 minutes. They board the ship - a merchant ship, mind you, armed only with fire hoses to keep the skinny pirates away. ship leaves port the Somali boys go after it. The big words apply here: consumerism, globalization, materialism. It would make them powerful, even power brokers, in the sand and scrub that they called home. It would buy them shoes and fill their bellies it would get them shelter. When Abduwali Muse left the Somali coast, he was part of a rag-tag bunch of boys - don't forget that part: a rag-tag bunch of teenaged boys - who dreamed of iPads and gold and cars and most of all, about money, and lots of it. Then they go home to tend the tomatoes and mow the lawn or to shovel snow and stack the firewood, depending on the job, the rotation, the company. They pick up ships in ports all over the world and deliver cargo though fog and weather on the high seas. When Captain Phillips left Vermont that spring day in 2009, it was just another trip for "the company." Merchant sea captains work six months on, six months off. merchant ship carrying food aid from Oman to Kenya. The ragged band of young pirates demanded much less on boarding Maersk Alabama, the U.S. Navy plays itself.īy now, the film "Captain Phillips" has earned more than $62 million worldwide. Barkhad Abdi plays Abduwali Muse, the teenaged Somali pirate. Tom Hanks plays Richard Phillips, the Vermont merchant ship captain.
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