Monday, October 14, 2013

Captain Phillips

Not all of the crew cooperated with the movie, and those who did were paid as little as $5,000 for their life rights by Sony and made to sign nondisclosure agreements — meaning they can never speak publicly about what really happened on that ship.
It’s the film’s version of events — and Hanks’ version of Phillips — that will be immortalized.
Nypost says it is one big lie and I tend to believe them. Summarized:
* Phillips character is all wrong, not the big leader as depicted
* Phillips had bad reputation for 12 months prior, nobody wanted to sail with him.
(how archaic)
* 11 crew members sued Maersk Line and Waterman Steamship Corp 50 million
wanton and conscious disregard for their safety
* crew begged no to go so close to Somali coast (Phillips said he wouldn't let pirates scare him or force him to sail away from the coast.
(how archaic)
* arrogant
* ignored detailed anti-piracy plan
1) cut all lights and power
2) lock themselves below deck
Phillips didn't want anything to do with the plan since it wasn't his plan then said he didn't know of the detailed plan (consisting of steps 1 and 2)
* ignored record of 16 recent piracies, 8 involving hostages
* Hanks "Let's tighten up security!" "I want everything closed, locked, even in port." 
*Phillips admits ignoring 7 emails exhorting ships to far farther offshore 600 miles.
* Maersk was 235 miles
* Phillips rounds up to 300 miles (says he doesn't know exactly) published reports had 240 at the time
* Phillips ignored all warnings, admitted he didn't share warnings.
* Ignored information his crew presented about piracy in the area
* the film depicts the crew as lazy coffee guzzlers union protected 
* Phillips says, their job is to get the cargo ship from Point A to Point B in the shortest, cheapest time possible. 
* The ship had actually veered off course due to earlier attack by 180 degrees (that's a lot)
* Conversely, Phillips insists the ship picked up speed.
* 2 pirate attacks in 18 hours, not 1 shown in film
* crew didn't know who to fear more, pirates or Phillips.
* during (1st) attack, as two pirate boats approached clearly chasing them, Phillips had his crew perform a fire drill, not a security drill as depicted in the film. Important because a crewmen asked Phillips if they should go to their pirate stations and Phillips said, "No." The fire drills needed once a year, pirates chasing. 
* one of the crew mutinied. Closed down and waited for the inevitable. 
* Phillips left the stern light on and the bridge open, pirates made third attack and boarded ship
* Phillips plan was throw up hands and go, "Oh the pirates are here." 
* Phillips left crew to fend for themselves, they locked themselves in 130 degree engine room for 12 hours Phillips denies it was that bad.

And more! They're mad. This is based on a book the captain wrote. The crew honestly believes the captain planned this all along because all the signs of failure along the way point to it. Their captain's observable behavior is inexplicable as it occurs, point for point nothing makes sense when compared to a properly run ship, and collectively the crew will know what that is supposed to look like, all the warnings ignored indicated the captain had some kind of death wish. Perry, the third engineer, speaks of recklessness that endangered all of their lives. It is galling now for them to see him set up as hero. 

They say, "It's a good movie. Real entertaining." 

No doubt it is. I hear Hanks is incredible. Best performance ever. I'll  wait for it on the SciFi channel. No, the History Network next to ancient alien visitations. 

I read a very long thread yesterday, a few of them, centering around not seeing the film because of Hanks. 

Nobody disputes he is a good actor and worth seeing, but so many insist they can no longer enjoy him or any movie he is in, and I have to say, it is difficult for me to suspend disbelief a second time, once for the actor, or producer, or director or main grip, and a second time for the fiction in films that presumes to be nonfiction. Where 'based on fact' means 'entirely false'. The wrong story is being told. A man who should be prosecuted is made a hero instead. 

I am so tired of that in real life.

I could watch a different show with actors that don't bug me about any ol' fiction at all where heroes and villains are reversed. 

47 comments:

Icepick said...

Phillips rounds up to 300 miles (says he doesn't know exactly) published reports had 240 at the time

Yeah, that's an incredible claim. It's not like he needed a sexton, compass and clear skies to figure it out, when all he had to do was consult GPS.

rhhardin said...

I watch Get Smart (2008) every day, albeit skipping to the good scenes.

Trevor Rabin has a great love story Leitmotif composed for it too.

Get the "2 disc" version (which has 3 discs) for more outtakes, as an interesting insight to the battles of gag writers and story writers.

They left out the right stuff.

The story line doesn't make sense exactly even discounting the gags - who has what information and could make easy inferences from it that they didn't make, or motivations for certain bad guys don't seem to exist - but the core story is right, the feminist and the guy are different creatures that get together.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Most dramas are far from the truth. Maybe Gravity will cause Captain Phillips's ship to sink?

sakredkow said...

Wait, what's the problem all those people have with Tom Hanks if nobody disputes he's a good actor and worth seeing then why don't they want to see him.

My problem with Tom Hanks is that he always chooses real safe movies more or less of a feel-good nature. He generally plays one-dimensional characters.

rhhardin said...

My Get Smart (2008) page photo set

The core story.

The last photo is not acted.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Of course there is controversy about Gravity too:

Scientists have determined that getting George Clooney to speak to a woman roughly his own age for an hour and a half is not scientifically possible.

Icepick said...

My problem with Tom Hanks is that he always chooses real safe movies more or less of a feel-good nature.

That's not fair. He played the biggest horse's ass in the space program in Apollo 13.

Oh, wait, they didn't portray Jim Lovell in that movie. They had Tom Hanks play Tom Hanks playing Jim Lovell.

Okay, I take it back. It's totally fair.

Icepick said...

Tom Hanks, bringing phx and Icepick together for one brief, feel-good moment.

Icepick said...

One other beef with Tom Hanks. All the accolades he got for Philadelphia pretty much over-whelmed recognition of Denzel Washington's performance, which was damned near the only reason that movie was even half-watchable.

...

Now if we had one of the early A-house comments here, bill of "So Quoted", could tell us about how great "Joe vs. the Volcano" really is.

Icepick said...

I miss the old old-timers at A-house. Bill and pooh and xwl and all the rest. Good times!

ndspinelli said...

Don't try and make Hanks to be a Redford type. He has played some non traditional characters that are not heroic.

rhhardin said...

The Phillips screwdriver was actually designed to auger out, too.

john said...

Tom Hanks, actually, in a reprise of the role that made him famous.

john said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Icepick said...

John, that looks like a clip from an American Ninja Warrior submission tape gone bad.

sakredkow said...

Tom Hanks, bringing phx and Icepick together for one brief, feel-good moment.

Exactly. Not exactly ready for the bromance but it was good for the moment.

Known Unknown said...

The fonts here are killing me.

Design Up!

Michael Haz said...

Someone gave Forrest Gump a ship?

sakredkow said...

I'm trying to think of Tom Hanks in a movie I loved. I liked some of his movies like Green Mile and the toy store movie, but I can't think of a great Tom Hanks movie.

Chip Ahoy said...

Okay, EMD, I did copy/past that from a scratch pad. I'll go in there and UNIFY it.

XRay said...

Glad I saw the movie last night before reading this post/comments. Couldn't avoid it, wife big Hanks fan. It was entertaining.

Chip Ahoy said...

Frankly, I like Hanks in everything I've seen him in. The retard one. That's perfect. Through the whole movie you go, "ah bless." And the little feather drifts away at the end of the film and the viewer is left wondering if his insane dumb luck just might have run out.

In another one he changes places with his boy and then acts like a boy. That was fun.

That's it. Except on t.v. where he dressed up like a girl to stay residing at a place, but the other guy was better.

He's an answer to various crossword clues, now that they're all like the T.V.Guide. That's it. All the fill is pop culture nowadays, no discrete corner is without them, it's often the theme.

I'm Full of Soup said...

Isepick:

ANW is one of my favorite shows.

Phx:

Saving Private Ryan was a great film though and Hanks had a big role in that.

sakredkow said...

Saving Private Ryan was a great film though and Hanks had a big role in that.

There you go. I knew there had to be one I was forgetting.

Icepick said...

I think I'd rather see Roy Biggins production of Forrest Hump.

And ANW should be one of EVERYONE's favorite shows, though it isn't as good as the Japanese original. The Japanese announcers are friggin' awesome! Also, Mr. Octopus! Mister Ninja Warrior! Naganooooooooooo!

And speaking of geeky TV shows, another good group of shows are the various "World's Strongest Man" shows. Atlas stones and fingle fingers, baby!

Icepick said...

The best thing about the Japanese show is listening to the announcers and realizing that the Japanese language lacks certain words, like "pipe" or "slider".

john said...

I thought he was very good in A League of Their Own.

As were Rosie and Madonna.

Known Unknown said...

"Okay, EMD, I did copy/past that from a scratch pad. I'll go in there and UNIFY it."

Awesome.

test said...

Hanks' best movie was a League of Their Own, although he's really a supporting character upbilled for his name.

He also carried Big, which means he was great because most kids-as-adults movies are unwatchable.

Birches said...

ANW is awesome. I haven't gotten to the point where I'm against watching movies just because of someone's politics.

Someone has to go pretty off the rails politically before I'll hold it against them for a completely innocuous movie.

Although maybe it does figure in subconsciously. I haven't seen a Matt Damon movie since Bourne.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

Cloud Atlas sucked, but his performance was just one of many reasons.

Birches said...

I take that back. A quick imdb search shows I enjoyed both Invictus and True Grit.

Ignorance is Bliss said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Ignorance is Bliss said...

I hated Philadelphia. Not because of his performance, but because it celebrates everything that is wrong with our civil jury trials.

He is fired for cause, with the decision being made by someone who never knew that he was gay or had aids. He then sues and wins, without ever presenting any evidence that he didn't make the mistake for which he was fired. ( The movie makes clear that it was not his mistake, but was sabotage by someone who knew he had aids. But this was never proven in court. )

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Ignorance is Bliss: The movie was only partially based on facts (there is some dispute about that). The actual underlying case that inspired the film did have the law firm acting poorly, at least in part (but so apparently did the plaintiff). A 150K, while not insignificant, award is hardly signs of an out of control tort legal system.

Bender said...

The crew's version and characterization of Phillips is entirely plausible after having watched some of the real-life captains on Deadliest Catch.

AllenS said...

Yeah, I gotta go with Saving Private Ryan as a really good movie.

But, it was a movie, and as an ex-Army paratrooper, with two Purple Hearts, they had the Army characters really doing some dumb stuff.

Those in charge of the movie, more than likely, had some input from people who were either there, or had knowledge of how it was. Unfortunately, they were overruled by the handlers in Hollywood.

Boo.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

AllenS, the "advisers" to SPR said beyond the Normandy Invasion scene (which those who were there or studied those events said was about a close to spot on without actually shooting at the audience), their advice was routinely ignored by Spielberg & Co.

AllenS said...

Same thing. Or, same difference.

Amartel said...

I've always liked Hanks even though he's obviously a big silly lib and sometimes a rather nasty one. He is the authentic American regular guy of a certain age Movie Star. All those adult-as-child roles are no mistake; that's his generation. But he also plays adult well. Private Ryan. I can watch Castaway and be entertained. I know that guy, I've met that guy. I like that guy or at least trust him. So I was really looking forward to this Captain Phillips. Hanks has been running about playing a sophisticate in those Dan Brown movies so I was ready for a return to regular guy. Except it seems (according to the crew) regular guy was trying to play a hero.

Amartel said...

Yeah, Philadelphia was a weeper about as deep as a John Grisham novel. A total waste of the two authentic American regular guy movie stars: Hanks and Denzel Washington. Clooney authentically phony. But, hey, there's money in that, too.

Icepick said...

The crew's version and characterization of Phillips is entirely plausible after having watched some of the real-life captains on Deadliest Catch.

What's the point in being a ship's captain unless you can go all Captain Ahab once in a while? Get yer inner Gregory Peck on!

Icepick said...

I just didn't care for Philadelphia at all, especially a few scenes that were done in a weirdly Batman-esque (1960s TV show) style. Although the joke about how gay men fake an orgasm was kind of funny.

I just watched the new version of True Grit Saturday night. Meh. Matt Damon kept speaking with vocal fry, and Jeff Bridges was mumbling so much I had to turn on the Closed Captioning. It wasn't bad, it just wasn't anywhere near as good as the original.

rcocean said...

Hanks is an OK, he's liberal but then 90% if them are.

I thought he was "meh" in Private Ryan. As for its realism, I didn't quite understand the business about throwing 60mm mortar shells like baseballs, but maybe they do that in the US Army.

rcocean said...

And the puzzzling German behavior, like sending your Tiger tanks in front of your infantry in a built up area. But they needed a "cool" shoot-out at the end.

William said...

Hanks is going to be in the new Woody Allen movie. It will offer a sympathetic treatment of the tormented last days of Ariel Castro. It's got Oscar written all over it......Hanks seems to be a decent human being. His politics are not mine, but they seem to be based on his convictions and not his neuroses. He's made some good movies, but I never had a man crush on him the way I did with Steve McQueen or Sean Connery........Tom Cruise is actively irritating. It's not based on his politics or religion or anything. He's just annoying. That said, he usually makes entertaining movies. I've never seen an actor with such a low Q factor make so many entertaining movies......Peter Dinklage does well as the midget on Game of Thrones, but, to my mind, the actor who could have really nailed that role was Tom Cruise.

edutcher said...

I haven't sen much of his stuff, but I did like him in "Bosom Buddies".

Of course, Donna Dixon may have had something to do with that.

AllenS said...

Yeah, I gotta go with Saving Private Ryan as a really good movie.

But, it was a movie, and as an ex-Army paratrooper, with two Purple Hearts, they had the Army characters really doing some dumb stuff.

Those in charge of the movie, more than likely, had some input from people who were either there, or had knowledge of how it was. Unfortunately, they were overruled by the handlers in Hollywood.


From what I can tell, Spielberg, who has something of a blood fetish IMHO, wanted to jam in every ghastly anecdote he could find.

He'd heard a lot of them from his father (Army Air Corps, IIRC) and some of his friends.