That's a bit of a working figure, I think. When a big ship is stuck and waylaid by pirates, for example, for a day, every day costs the ship owners and the insurers and various other people something like $50,000 a day. And while that may seem a bit of a weak-handed course of action and one that might just simply make the problem worse - paying ransoms and paying ransoms fairly willingly - what you have to do, to some extent, is to look at it from the shipping side of the economics of it. SIEGEL: Well, hijackings did become so common off the Somali coast that shipping companies, ship owners were routinely paying off ransoms.įREEMAN: That's right, yes. And that, you know, if the crew just simply pay up the ransom then there will be no problem. And, you know, that they make it very clear to people very early on that this is effectively a business model. And that's something that you often hear pirates doing.
What's also notable, though, is that having stormed the ship at the beginning, and put on a great display of aggression, the pirates then calm down and relax a lot and say: Look, don't worry, this is just about money - no problem - we're not al-Qaida or whatever. As I understand it, they actually got in non-professional actors by recruiting people from Minnesota in America, from a Somali community there. They come across as a thoroughly nasty bunch and that is, you know, down to the quality of the acting involved. I have to say I would not be too sad if this lot ended on the end of a gallows. The pirates in the film are quite scary and watching them being played on screen did bring some of it back for me.
#CAPTAIN PHILLIPS MOVIE#
I'm curious - first, as someone who was taken captive by Somali pirates - do you think this movie gets them right?įREEMAN: Yes, I think it does. SIEGEL: That's actually a pretty terrifying, heart-pounding scene. HANKS: (as Captain Phillips) It's all right. SIEGEL: Well, here's a moment in the movie "Captain Phillips" when pirates take over the Maersk Alabama. It should also be remembered that at the time when this kidnapping took place, the Somali pirates had suddenly begun to range far wider out to sea, and ships had been caught 600, a thousand miles off the Somali coast - effectively all over the western half of the Indian Ocean. I've read the Maersk Alabama, the ship company that employed Captain Phillips and the crew, have said that the lawsuit is without foundation. He's a defense witness in that suit and, I gather, denies any negligence.ĭo you have any sense of who's right about that? Was the ship sailing dangerously close to the Somali coast?įREEMAN: I don't have any particular sense of who is right on that, and obviously it will be down for a court to decide so.
Several crewmembers in real life charged that - in the lawsuit they charged that the ship was sailing too close to shore, and that there were warnings of piracy in the area and messages urging Phillips to sail farther out. SIEGEL: There is one contentious point, I guess, in the movie and in Richard Phillips' account. There are some details that have been changed, I think occasionally just for the purpose of narrative convenience really more than anything else. From what I can tell having interviewed Captain Phillips, having read his book as well, and my recollections of the incident when it happened, it's pretty much as told. It's a very realistic docudrama kind of movie, I would say. Does the movie generally strike you as a generally truthful rendering of what happened?įREEMAN: Yes, it does. He is taken hostage in a lifeboat and the episode ends in a rescue raid at sea by Navy SEALs. SIEGEL: And first, I should say in the way of summary that in this story, Captain Phillips negotiates the freedom of his crew and ship, in exchange for money. In fact, in the course of his work, he was kidnapped by Somali pirates.
SIEGEL: That's Tom Hanks as Captain Phillips.Ĭolin Freeman has written about the story, the movie, and the problem of piracy for Britain's Sunday Telegraph. We have two skiffs approaching at a distance of 1.5 miles with a possible mother ship following - potential piracy situation.
Our position is two degrees two north by 39 degrees, 19 east. TOM HANKS: (as Captain Phillips) This the Maersk Alabama. Today, the suspenseful piracy story off the Somali Coast: the hijacking of the cargo ship the Maersk Alabama and the kidnapping of its captain, Richard Phillips. And we're asking people who are familiar with those real stories and events whether the movies are faithful to them, or in some ways aren't faithful to them. This week, we're returning to some movies that were released this year in particular, movies based on real stories and events. This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR NEWS.
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