He shouted and grabbed the pirate that shot the captain in the end, so I guess he was higher rank. Also, the first time he arrived on the boat he checked things out as if he was 'the boss'. Any thoughts?
shareI wondered this too. He looked well fed unlike the other pirates. It's an interesting choice by the film makers to never clarify who he was or what role was Omar's.
Why do you refuse to remember me?share
My thought: why does it matter? Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. Who cares?
shareUm...obviously they care. That's why the OP started the thread, and why a few people are engaged in active conversation around the topic. I don't understand your confusion. Please explain.
shareNo confusion, it is not a general question. Even if it was true, so what? People try to over-analyse everything here, I put it down to poor potty training.
shareIf it bothers you, don't read it. We came to a message board on the internet to analyze what we want to analyze. Why else would we come here, to talk about the weather?
share[deleted]
Why do you join a topic, just to tell people you don't care about the topic?
shareOf course he was. It's evident in the last scene on the ship, where he is smacking Rashid around. If he were a "hostage" taken by the pirates, let's say some school teacher kidnapped by the pirates to assist them, he would not act that way.
The whole negotiation is psychological warfare. Peter often refers to the fact that he needs to "consult with his board", to give Omar the sense that he's not omnipotent, and Omar places himself in a sympathetic position to have a better psychological grip on the crewmen, especially on Mikkel. The whole "Mikkel calls his wife" incident was one of Omar's masterful tricks.
Both Peter and Omar are playing the "sorry, I'd love to but my lawyer forbids me" negotiation game. It's very common tactics, to confuse the other party about how much power you actually have.
yes, you've put forward a very good summary of the mindgames, tricks, etc used by both sides. The way Omar plays both the "good cop" by saying he's just the negotiator and sometimes giving the crew little privileges, then also playing the "bad cop" by directly/indirectly threatening and sometimes physically abusing Mikkel & the other crew. In the end he scolds his pirate for that terrible act, probably not because he had any real sympathy for his captives, but because doing it would be "bad for business" in future.
shareYes I think you're pointing to a crucial element of the drama... the parallels between Omar and the CEO. Their friendly "How are you?" at the start of the phone calls puts them on the same level. And I can't help feeling the film is making a comment about the way corporations are like a gang of pirates... playing psychological games to get the best deals. There was a lingering coldness about the CEO that made me think he could easily be unspeakably cruel if he wasn't Swedish.
No kidding, Omar was doing exactly what Connor told the CEO to do. He was a supposed intermediary who "couldn't" be emotionally involved and supposedly didn't have any real power. He would always have to ask "them".
Although when you say "leader", he was not the real leader. He was the field leader, the brains in the field. THe real leader was back in Somalia drinking Cristal and torturing underlings.
The real boss is probably some warlord type back on the mainland. Omar had more power than anybody else, but just because he had a real skill set, and had real responsibility. Since everyone else is just hired guns and easily replaceable, Omar with his skills has more authority over them. The actual boss would not go anywhere near the scene of the hijacking.
shareHave you seen the documentary about a Somali pirate negotiator called Stolen Seas. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1981690/
I believe that although the negotiator benefits from the collection of the ransom money, no one thinks of him as a pirate . . . except the US government does now that documentary has been released. The filmmaker's article here talks about how his film footage was used to prosecute the negotiator, which was not his intent. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thymaya-payne/somali-pirate-filmmaker-documentary_b_4502564.html
I'm I the only one who kind of hates reading posts like this because it kind of frustrates you that you didn't think of it on your own?
Anyway, astute observation. Can't confirm but the evidence seems to support the theory. One thing's for sure, that's a twist you likely wouldn't find in a major blockbuster like Captain phillips.
My guess is he became the leader or defacto leader due to superior education and sophistication over his peers. They never really show his full range of abilities in the film but anyone who can speak English as well as him probably has a lot of skills and education relative to other pirates. He's probably also a very good psychological manipulator, possibly a psychopath, a skill clearly demonstrated in the film and also another way for him to become the leader.
It thought at the end of the film that he slapped the guy because he was tired of the whole thing and thought he had *beep* them all by doing that, but your theory makes a lot more sense.
thinking about it now it seems, yes, it's most likely that omar is the leader, at least among the pirates on the ship.
there still is the possibility that he truly is just the negotiator, but in the whole film we didn't see a single pirate with more appearant authority than omar and the fact that he isn't as skinny as the other pirates could mean that he is on a higher rank than his comrades.
during watching i was more naive and i would have believed omars words, even thinking i would spare him, if i was on the ship, trying to revolt against the pirates. but that only shows how good a manipulator omar is and that i probably shouldn't be quite that naive. :)