The most shocking sequence in cinema this year is in Captain Phillips when it shows how easily a bunch of pirates can hijack a massive container ship.
Two-time Academy Award-winner Hanks plays the eponymous captain, a by-the-book merchant mariner who skippered the United States-flagged MV Maersk Alabama through the dangerous Somali basin in 2009.
Dangerous because of brazen daylight raids by Somali pirates, who are as far removed from Captain Jack Sparrow as you could imagine.
Bug-eyed, excitable, dressed in rags and waving AK-47s in everyone's faces, the little band of fishermen take over the unarmed floating metaphor for the West while its crew take cover below deck.
Phillips engages in a battle of wits with the skeletal pirate leader Muse (Abdi).
Tension is ratcheted up to almost unbearable levels when a deal is broken and the gang kidnaps Phillips in a claustrophobic lifeboat for ransom, just as the United States Navy surrounds them to negotiate, or take the ship by force.
In what could well be the makings of his third golden statuette, Hanks tries to keep a cool head and his terror in check under constant threat of death.
Captain Phillips is a real world action thriller, with the depth of a very human story and a treatise on globalisation cause and effect.
Just don't forget to breathe while you're on the edge of your seat.
Captain Phillips (M)
Starring: Tom Hanks (Cloud Atlas), Catherine Keener (Enough Said), newcomer Barkhad Abdi.
Director: Paul Greengrass (Green Zone, The Bourne Ultimatum).
Screening: Reading Cinemas Queenstown
Four stars (out of five)
