how acurate is the new movie "Captain Phillips"?

In 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. The movie is made out to be a dramatic drama with a captain who is willing to give his life for his crew. But based off my research on the actual event that occurred in 2009 I am not sure the movie was accurate in depiction the type of man Phillips was.

 

Based off my research into the issue I have found that many of Phillip’s crewmembers, claim his account misrepresents the story. According to them, Phillips behaved irresponsibly; saying that they he ignored warnings about pirates in the area and sailed too close to the Somali coast. One of Phillip’s crewmembers, a man who goes by the name ATM, has also claimed that he warned Phillips that a pirate ship was approaching only to have Phillips dismiss him: “I told him, ‘Captain, I’m damn sure this is pirate boat,’ ATM has said. “He laughed at me. He told me it could be a fishing boat. He walked away from me.” Phillips denies this account ever happening.

 

 As in the movie, Phillips received messages warning him about recent hijackings in the surrounding waters but chose to keep his course. The Alabama (the name of the ship) sailed 300 to 400 miles from the Somali coast in order to maintain a faster and more direct route, even though at least one warning cautioned that “vessels should consider maintaining a distance of more than 600 miles from Somalia coastline.” Most of the warnings were directed at all the ships in the area, but one was sent directly to Phillips. Unlike in the movie, Phillips didn’t hide the surrounding hijackings from his wife, as he did in other accounts recorded.

 

The hijacker’s first failed attack plays out in Phillip’s account in the real situation as it did in the movie. The detail about Phillips faking a radio call with the U.S. military in order to scare off the pirates is also true to Phillip’s account. But the Alabama wasn’t in the middle of a pirate drill when they were attacked, they were in the middle of a fire and boat drill.  The crew members successfully fought off the pirates.

 

The crew’s efforts to take the ship back are also largely accurate, though some accounts where proven to be made up by the movie writers. For example the crew never made a field of broken glass to have the pirates step on as a booby trap.

 

Also another way to disprove that Phillips was a ‘great hero’ is that Phillips doesn’t call himself a hero for these actions. In the movie, Phillips says things like, “If you want to shoot someone, shoot me!” But Phillips says that he never meant to sacrifice himself for the crew. Not very heroic.

 

In the end as soon as the Navy SEAL snipers (members of SEAL Team Six, the same team that took out Osama bin Laden) were able to get clean shots on all three pirates at once, they killed them almost simultaneously, with one shot each to the head.

 

The end of the movie was also different from the account because Tom Hanks said that Phillips couldn’t remember what he first did after his encounter was finished, the movie writers added in themselves the parts of his shock where all made up to make it more interesting.