With a tone and feel much like last year’s “Zero Dark Thirty”, which garnered countless critics’ awards and several nominations from the Academy, “Captain Phillips” will probably not be as popular, but guaranteed that this film gets recognized in nominations regardless. With a well-rounded, newspaper headline film, there’s two nominations that almost have to be locked, Best Actor (Tom Hanks) and Best Supporting Actor (Barkhad Abdi). Both deliver amazing work and I really feel strongly that you cannot give one a nomination without the other. Abdi is a first time actor and with that in mind, his performance is absolutely jaw-dropping. With two back-to-back Academy Award wins for Hanks (“Philadelphia” & “Forrest Gump”), it would be no surprise to see him garnering the recognition as the title character.

Now, with the 8-10 Best Picture rule, I would easily say that “Captain Phillips” finds a place in the Best Picture nominations. Not that I feel it can win, but it will help round out the category as one of the best films of the year. With a highly charged film such as this, you can’t help but imagine it being nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing, which does put it in position to be able to teeter towards winning Best Picture, but we’ll save that discussion once nomination are revealed. That being said, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to then see Paul Greengrass get a nomination for Best Director.

“Captain Phillips” will be one of the big players at this year’s Oscars, whether you cared for it or not. I screams Oscars and with a strong chance of nominations in Best Sound Editing and Best Sound Mixing on top of the rest, this will be a strong competitor, and feels like that film that could easily gain enough support where people start suspecting it as a winner. My fantasy is to see Barkhad Abdi on Oscar night and although I will be rooting for some of his competitors (probably Michael Fassbender for “12 Years A Slave”), I will not be disappointed at all if he were able to pull off the ultimate upset.

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