The Pirates of Somalia

So it's that time of year again where I watch a bunch of the movies that I have had on my Netflix list for the entire year. These are usually movies that are critical hits, but not movies you can just watch randomly. These are the films I want to be paying attention to the most to try and get the best of cinema. The Pirates of Somalia is a good film, but it's definitely not the best film I'm going to watch on that list.

The Pirates of Somalia follows the true story of Jay Bahadur (played by Evan Peters). Jay is a high school graduate who wants to become a journalist but is having a hard time really getting his work off the ground. He continuously received rejection letters and is living in his parents basement doing work to get by until he can hopefully go to Harvard.

One day he comes across a drunk Al Pacino playing his favorite journalist. I have mad respect for Al Pacino, but the guy looks like he just got out of bed and is really only in like 2 scenes of the movie. If they took Al Pacino out of the end of the movie, you probably would have forgotten he was in the movie at all. But Al Pacino says that the best way to become a journalist is to jump into the deep and and make a name for himself out in the field.

Jay takes this advice quite literally and decides that he's going to go to Somalia to do investigative journalism on the new wave of piracy in the country, especially since no news organization at the time could get anybody into the country because it was so dangerous for reporters to be there. He gathers money, much of it lent to him by his parents, and he goes to Somalia to start writing a book.

When he gets there he starts interviewing pirates, adjusting to a different dangerous culture, and falls in love with one of the wives of a dangerous pirate. He's joined by a translator by the name of Abdi (played by Barkhad Abdi) and the two of them get into some scrapes with dangerous pirates right in the midst of when the topic became relevant to the western world, especially with the hostage situation involving Captain Phillips.

This movie reminded me a lot of the Tina Fey movie, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. There are a lot of similarities. The movie centers on a journalist who has no experience in international journalism. In both movies they go and live in a very dangerous place where not a lot of reporters are. They both get in with corrupt leaders, they both meet with warlords and dangerous people. They both shoot AK-47s with those dangerous people. They both get in too deep with drugs or alcohol. They both put their translator and those helping them at risk, for the sake of getting the story and there is a part of just for the thrill that is a part of the story. And both movies have some comedic elements to offset the really dangerous environment these journalists find themselves in.

But whereas Whiskey Tango Foxtrot was really good with balancing the comedy, the pacing, and the intense moments. The Pirates of Somalia is a bit of a drag at some points. There are a lot of points in the movie where I dozed off and had to rewind, or I just wasn't interested in what was going on. Which is a shame because I think this movie does a lot of things right.

The majority of the characters I believe are Somalian actors and they do a really good job. You'll remember Barkhad Abdi from Captain Phillips and he's probably the best part of the film. I really think people need to start utilizing him in more roles then just the guy from Somalia.

The topic is really interesting too. I'm a student of international relations and politics and as the movie points out, not a whole lot is known about Somalian pirates, and even less was known about them in 2009. This movie does hit on some really interesting topics and I did enjoy a lot of parts about the film.

I think one of the issues I had with the film was Evan Peters. I was so lukewarm on his performance because, like the film, there are parts about it that work and there are parts about it that really didn't work.

Evan Peters has this very young look. I think this really works for the film because the point of the film is that Jay is a really young guy with no experience being thrown into this crazy scenario. I think that worked. Even with his obviously fake beard and long hair wig, he still looks incredibly young. Even the characters choices sometimes work.

They play Jay off as his really eccentric free thinker. Maybe is like that in real life, but especially at the beginning he's talking all this hipster BS about how he's fighting the machine or something like that. A part of me thought it worked because again, he's a young kid with no experience and it's better than having him be a super generic white dude in a movie where he's already gonna stand out.

But this often made the character not really that relatable in a scenario that I think a lot of young people (myself included) would find very relatable. I think a lot of people want to just say screw it and go off and do something crazy like this guy does in this film. The end message of the film does kind of work against that idea though as the movie is trying to send the message of greater understanding and less interference with a place like Somalia. So unfortunately, the movie is put in a weird position of having this character be super eccentric and sometimes unlikeable, but also avoiding a white crusader or privileged vibe to him.

Again, it's not bad, just a little uneven at times. Oh... and I really hated his beard and clearly a wig he wore for the latter half of the movie.

I think the biggest issue of this movie is just the pacing. It's an interesting story and it actually made me want to go out and read the book and do more research on this guy Jay Bahadur and Somalia as a whole.

But the movie just didn't feel like it had enough backing behind it. It felt very low budget with a premise that seemed like it needed a bigger budget and a little more Oompf to it.

I felt like they were going for a comedic style or just a stylistic approach in general that got lost in the mix somewhere.

The movie gets really cerebral at times for really odd reasons. It cuts to these animated shorts or trippy imagery that isn't real but that help explain (sorta) the situation in Somalia with these pirates or what's going on in Jay's mind at the moment. Sometimes it's when Jay is dreaming, sometimes it's when he's high, but other times, there is no reason and its just trippy and cerebral for the sake of being trippy and cerebral. But it feels very uneven.

Overall, I think The Pirates of Somalia had a really interesting story and topic to cover and it just didn't quite hit the mark as much as it should have. I don't feel too strongly about it to say you should openly avoid this one, but I also don't think it's one you need to go out of your way to look into. It's a fine movie but there's probably a reason you've never heard of it.

But those are my thoughts on The Pirates of Somalia. What did you think of it? Comment and Discuss below! You can also send me your thoughts on Twitter @MovieSymposium as well as send me your requests for films I should review in the future. If you follow me on Twitter, you can get updates on future movie news and reviews coming out of this blog.

Thanks for reading!