Captain Phillips 2013

Christy Lemire, ChristyLemire.com: The entire performance is one of the greatest in Hanks' prolific, varied career - a role that gives him a massive arc and the opportunity to show great range. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: Greengrass floods the moviegoer's eye with enormous amounts of assimilable detail. Those gifts are on offer here too, but in a scenario lacking in suspense. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture: Greengrass and screenwriter Billy Ray put us on the side of Phillips, his crew, the American negotiators, the Navy, and the SEALS. But we understand the greater tragedy of Muse and the Somalis' lives. Read more

Ty Burr, Boston Globe: Director Paul Greengrass creates an aura of urgency so compelling, so rooted in detail, that we temporarily forget what we know and hold our breaths for two-plus hours of tightening suspense. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: One of the year's best films. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Under the trigger-ready direction of Paul Greengrass, everything pays off handsomely in a series of well-timed encounters that keep you on the edge of your seat. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: The film succeeds on its own terms-an exciting entertainment that makes us feel good about the outcome, and about the reach of American power, rather than its limits. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: You won't forget "Captain Phillips" in a hurry - nor will you forget Hanks, who in midcareer still finds ways to dazzle us anew. Read more

Scott Foundas, Variety: At every step, Hanks excels at showing what's really going on in the character's mind while maintaining his facade of almost folksy calm. It isn't one of the actor's rangiest roles, but it culminates in an eruption of emotional fireworks ... Read more

A.A. Dowd, AV Club: It's [Hanks'] best performance in years, one that resurrects the actor's dormant gift-shared by Hollywood ancestors like Gregory Peck and Jimmy Stewart-for charismatic decency. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic: It's not meant to be smooth sailing, and overall "Captain Phillips" is a voyage well-worth taking. Read more

J. R. Jones, Chicago Reader: More cool thrills from the military-entertainment complex. Read more

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune: Capt. Richard Phillips is all business, and so is Hanks' portrayal. Read more

Peter Rainer, Christian Science Monitor: It's some of the most powerful acting Hanks has ever done. Read more

Chris Vognar, Dallas Morning News: We're in the steady hands of Paul Greengrass, a director fully aware that convincing crisis stories involve conflicting interests and passions. Read more

Lisa Kennedy, Denver Post: Captain Phillips puts names and faces to its tale of economic clashes. That's why Hanks' and Abdi's performances are so anchoring. Their characters face off, negotiate, cajole each other not as archetypes but as humans. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News: This is one of the year's best movies and it features Tom Hanks' strongest work in more than a decade. But it's a live wire, time bomb of a film that, when it finally releases, leaves your nerves scrambled. Read more

Cary Darling, Fort Worth Star-Telegram/DFW.com: With Captain Phillips, Greengrass doesn't disappoint, injecting the story with a sense of nervous energy and creeping claustrophobia. The movie manages to be both tense and suspenseful, even though the world knows how it ends. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly: Greengrass keeps you off balance - he's a jittery poet of reality. Read more

David Ehrlich, Film.com: Arguably Greengrass' best film, and almost certainly his most urgent. Read more

Wesley Morris, Grantland: Over and over in this movie we hear variations on the phrase "everything's going to be OK." It's just impossible to head out of the theater and back into the wider world believing that's actually true. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter: Paul Greengrass and Tom Hanks team up for a pulsating account of the kidnapping of the captain of an American cargo ship by Somali pirates. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: The piercingly realistic "Captain Phillips" will exceed your expectations. Read more

Charlie McCollum, San Jose Mercury News: "Captain Phillips" will grab and hold your attention from its first few minutes to its startling conclusion. Read more

Rene Rodriguez, Miami Herald: Director Paul Greengrass' treatment of this material - and Tom Hanks' extraordinary performance - makes the movie required viewing for the informed and uninformed alike. Read more

Ryan Kearney, The New Republic: The drug-addled camera and ominous music might seem excessive in Phillips' home office, but like a noisy refrigerator or odd smell, the body learns to ignore what's jarring at first. Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday: This is the kind of gripping thriller for the age of globalization that director Paul Greengrass has been honing in movies like "United 93" and "The Green Zone." Read more

Anthony Lane, New Yorker: In Big, Hanks gave us a boy who became a man overnight; now, in Captain Phillips, he gives us a man so shaken and sickened by adventure that for a while, despite himself, he turns back into a child. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger: Basically, this is a crime story that slowly builds to a very good second half, and a drama with a fine performance at its heart. And that's how it should really be seen. Read more

Jocelyn Noveck, Associated Press: What Greengrass excels at is action - taut and visceral - and it happens as soon as the captain suddenly looks at a screen and sees two small dots moving toward the ship. Read more

Bob Mondello, NPR: Hanks and Abdi are so compellingly matched that unlike with most thrillers, it won't be the action climax in Captain Phillips that'll stick with you. It'll be that aftermath, which gets at the emotional toll of terrorism in a way few movies have. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News: Captain Phillips unfurls with an intensity that knocks the wind out of you. Director Paul Greengrass' film is the most gripping based-on-fact film so far this year. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times: There's something so unforced about him that it can seem as if he's not delivering a performance, just being Tom Hanks. Read more

Michael Sragow, Orange County Register: No one working in movies today does fervid, visceral realism better than director Paul Greengrass. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer: We watch these films and wonder about ourselves, about who we are, why we are here, what we would do. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: An intense experience that will leave many viewers exhausted by the time the 2 1/4-hour running time expires. Read more

Richard Roeper, Richard Roeper.com: It's the work of Tom Hanks that makes this film unforgettable. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: This is acting of the highest order in a movie that raises the bar on what a true-life action thriller can do. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: As cinema it plays a lot like a knockoff of "Zero Dark Thirty," without the same ambition and scale and with dramatically lower stakes. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle: Another highlight in Tom Hanks' Americana gallery, the story of a seemingly regular guy who turns out to be something more than a regular guy, thus giving hope to regular guys everywhere. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate: In addition to being an action-adventure about captors and hostages, Captain Phillips is a tragedy about the ruinous consequences of global capitalism. Read more

Colin Covert, Minneapolis Star Tribune: Hostage situations have inspired so many shallow, primitive genre films that it's eye-opening to see what an inspired filmmaker can achieve with the material. Read more

Joe Williams, St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Freighted with weighty issues, "Captain Phillips" is a film worth debating. Read more

Christopher Orr, The Atlantic: Whether or not you find it an inadvertent parable of the political moment (I do), Captain Phillips is a terrific film. Read more

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail: Captain Phillips manages to expose us to a few things that are unusual in a thriller, including sympathy for the enemy and, in Hanks's performance, the frailty that is the other side of heroism. Read more

Peter Howell, Toronto Star: A survival saga that raises the pulse and tweaks the conscience. Read more

Alonso Duralde, TheWrap: The filmmakers are as interested in the human element as they are in the true events they're recounting. It's too bad that they couldn't have made their real-life bad guys as multi-dimensional as their hero. Read more

Joshua Rothkopf, Time Out: Compare Hollywood's effort to Denmark's recent A Hijacking, rich with corporate guilt and off-board tensions, and the shortcomings are clear. Read more

Claudia Puig, USA Today: Hanks deftly captures Phillips' blend of bravery, heroism and abject terror in a wonderfully minimalist performance, one of his best. Read more

Nick Schager, Village Voice: It's a Hollywood-style A Hijacking for dummies. Read more

Ann Hornaday, Washington Post: Yet another Greengrass masterpiece. And it reveals why there have been so many: Behind the director's dispassionate, unfailingly rigorous lens lies an enormous, unfailingly compassionate heart. Read more