TOM HANKS NAVIGATES A VARIETY OF CHARACTERS.
Film takes creative licence with real life pirate story
Tom Hanks isn’t bored with his romantic-comedy nice guy persona, but he is seeing other characters these days.
Call it his mid-life acting crisis — in a positive way.
The 57-year-old played multiple personalities in the complex, time shifting, sci-fi fantasy Cloud Atlas last year.
He just finished his debut on Broadway portraying a hardboiled tabloid journalist in Lucky Guy. This upcoming holiday season he can be seen as Walt Disney in Saving Mr. Banks, the behindthe-scenes story recalling the making of Mary Poppins.
His latest against-type mission is defined in Captain Phillips, an action thriller directed by Paul Greengrass.
The film is a dramatized account of the merchant captain (Hanks), who was taken hostage by Somali pirates during the 2009 hijacking of the freighter ship Maersk Alabama.
It’s loosely based on a book by Richard Phillips called A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea. While the film rendition is loyal to the main events, Billy Ray’s script takes some liberties.
That was one of the first things the Oscar-winning Hanks had to explain to Phillips when he met with him to discuss the cinematic approach to recounting his harrowing ordeal.
“I explained to him,” Hanks told reporters in New York recently, “I will say things you never said and will be places you never were. But if we do this right, thematically we will be spot on.”
As usual, Hanks immersed himself in his portrayal by studying as though he was preparing for a final exam.
“You have to load up with an awful lot of facts, quite frankly,” he said. “You read, and you look at video, and you listen to stuff, but there’s always some sort of detail that makes the final tumbler lock into place.”
Adding to the realism of the movie was the fact that they shot the story on a near identical ship in and around ocean waters close to their base of operations at Malta.
Hanks said that he was especially relieved to have Greengrass by his side in the quest to find “that combination of procedure and behaviour” mirroring real events.
Of course, Greengrass established his Hollywood credentials with his documentary-style action sequences featured in Matt Damon’s The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum action hits.
The director also showed off his talents with the gripping docu-drama United 93 recalling the harrowing events on board a passenger jet during the 9-11 crisis in the U. S.
Greengrass is less flashy in Captain Phillips, but he does capture the urgency of the dire dilemma that unfolded during the first hijacking of an American cargo ship in 200 years.
However, the narrative isn’t told exclusively from Captain Phillips’ point of view. At the start, it is revealed why the former Somali fishermen are being forced into a life of crime.
So far, previews have been positive, including a triumphant premiere at the recent New York Film Festival in which critics compared Hank’s portrayal to his acclaimed Cast Away survivalist effort.
The direction, screenplay and cinematography are being praised, too, and so is the performance of Barkhad Abdi.
Abdi plays the Somali pirate leader in an almost sympathetic light as he desperately tries to maintain authority in a situation getting out of his control.
Tense and taut, the movie slowly builds into a nail-biting climax without resorting to the usual flash.
The cast and crew did suffer for their movie art, though. Hanks reported that sea sickness was a constant problem, especially during some lifeboat sequences on the rolling waves close to Malta. They even suffered queasiness shooting sequences on a London soundstage gimbal simulating the roll and pitch of rough ocean waters.
For all the strategic planning the film required, Hanks said that Greengrass still made time for acting moments, some of them improvised.
A critical and ultimately powerful infirmary scene at the conclusion ended up in the final cut, mostly because the director was open to giving it a try with actual members of a ship’s Navy crew.
“What was extraordinary about it was Paul’s willingness to see that as a possibility,” Hanks said.
In the meantime, Hanks will be returning to more familiar territory. He’s booked to do the voice of Woody in Pixar’s Toy Story 4 and he’ll soon revisit Harvard symbolist Robert Langdon in Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol.
After all, he’s forged an impressive career mixing commerce and craft. And even Hanks, in his new phase, can’t ignore the monetary facts.
The Toy Story series has earned nearly $2 billion US while the previous movie versions of Brown’s thrillers, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons, scooped up close to $1.3 billion worldwide.
It doesn’t mean he’s returning fully to his mainstream roots. So expect more experimentation from the actor who seems to have found his second wind.
“It’s the greatest job in the world,” said Hanks of his profession. “All of these jobs are alliances with other artists.
“And I can’t imagine a better way of spending your waking hours than putting on people’s clothes and pretending to be somebody that you’re not.”