Film Preview: Captain Phillips (2013)

Poster

Additional posters can be found below.

Trailer Link

Release Date:

October 11, 2013

Synopsis:

From IMDb: “The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.”

Poster: B- / B / C

Review: It’s a sheer vertical climb to victory, which juxtaposes the challenging climb to comprehension and compulsion. It’s evocative without being exceedingly creative.

I wasn’t terribly impressed with the first poster design, but combining that with Tom Hanks’ visage bolsters its appeal and its draw to audiences not familiar with the film or the trailer.

Take away the boarding aspect of the first poster from the second and add minor details to the bottom of the design doesn’t embellish the design. It has the gun-toting hijackers element, but loses the impact of impending doom of the first two designs.

Trailer: B / B+

Review: Spending an hour and a half with Tom Hanks trying to save peoples’ lives isn’t necessarily the most exciting ideas. Hanks isn’t really an action star. However, Greengrass has an interesting approach to filmmaking that could make the film a bit more compelling.

This second trailer makes the film look far more broad in scope than the original. The teaser showed a ship under siege, which is fairly uninteresting. This new trailer does a lot more showing this to be a more intensive, comprehensive narrative that doesn’t just paint Hanks and crew as victims, but sets up the main “villain” as a victim as well. I’m far more interested in this film after the second trailer than the first.

Oscar Prospects:

With Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks involved, you can’t count it out. However, other than a nomination for Tom Hanks as Best Actor and perhaps a nomination or two in the creative and tech categories, I don’t see this one doing too well with the Academy.