Tom Hanks shines as the eponymous captain of a Maersk cargo ship, making the journey down the Horn of Africa from Salalah to Mombasa. His ship is targeted for attack by a small group of Somali pirates, fishermen under the control of a local gang leader. Although he and his team try desperately to evade them, the four Somalis eventually succeed in boarding the ship.

They take the Captain hostage and demand money – millions of dollars in fact – but when two of the pirates sustain injuries at the hands of the crew, they agree to take $30,000 from the ship’s safe and get out. They leave in the lifeboat, except this time they have an extra person with them: Captain Phillips. Cue a long game of cat-and-mouse, the big ship following the little boat across the seas to the coast of Somalia. 

The drama and intensity of the very human narrative, based on real events that happened in 2009, is perfect for cinema. The director, Paul Greengrass of Bourne trilogy fame, certainly knows how to make a gripping film. We jump from one claustrophobic ship interior to another, the restless camera blurring nationalities as it flits from one terrified human face to the next.

The tension mounts and mounts, moments of relative calm followed by harrowing power struggles between the pirates, while the Captain’s life hangs in the balance. When the faceless might of the US Navy is added to the mix, you begin to wonder how any of the lifeboat’s inhabitants, American or Somali, will ever make it out of this ordeal alive.

Audiences who aren’t enthusiasts of the US government’s military doctrine may find cause for complaint with the focus on the power of the American army, especially the invincible nature of its Navy Seals – the slow-motion sequence where they pack gun after gun onto their sculpted torsos is memorable, if for slightly the wrong reasons.

The Somalis too get a rather rough deal onscreen, with little chance for character development beyond the generic ‘bad guys’. This is, however, an action film, not a humanitarian drama, and as the genre goes it is an intelligent and moving portrayal of our hero’s traumatic fight for survival.

Hanks, as the Captain, is endlessly watchable: the ultimate everyman, he becomes the viewer’s husband, father, brother, son, a fair captain who continues to put himself in the line of danger on his crew’s behalf and we demand to know his fate, however awful it may turn out to be.

The power play between Captain Phillips and the Somali captain is complicated, both of them respecting and yet unwilling to trust the other. Phillips is told that the whole hostage episode is “just a job” and is promised that he will not be harmed, and so seems initially resigned to his time in the lifeboat. As the film progresses however, we realise with terrifying clarity that this has become so much more than an average business transaction.