Ship-shape show that's absorbing and unsettling

THE discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots comes into stunning focus in Captain Phillips, an intense and frantic thriller about the hijacking of an American-owned cargo ship by Somali pirates that puts the viewer uncomfortably close to the action on the screen.

The movie is based on A Captain's Duty, a book about the incident by the real Capt Phillips. It's written by Billy Ray and helmed by Paul Greengrass, a director who never met a confined space or close-up he didn't like. He did it with plenty of panache in a couple of Jason Bourne films and he does it here with stomach-churning precision with Richard Phillips, the beleaguered title character who for a few terrifying days in 2009 was at the centre of a ship-jacking storm off the Somali coast.

It's a story that contains the necessary ingredients for a real-life contemporary thriller - far from the world of super-spies and international intrigue - involving a crew of ordinary workers heading blissfully unaware into danger, a handful of angry, trigger-happy desperadoes and an Everyman who is reluctantly thrust into a heroic situation.