A scene from Captain Phillips Photo: IC

 Paul Greengrass' new thriller, Captain Phillips, is torn from the headlines, but the British director sees the story of an American ship captain's ordeal with Somali pirates as a timeless tale of poverty-stricken criminals and a run-in with the law.

"These young men get involved for the same reason that young men got involved in organized crime in the major cities of America in the 1920s and 1930s ... or Britain's highwaymen in the 18th century," Greengrass said in an interview.

"It's old history, isn't it, these stories? It took an old story and told it in a very new place," noted the director, who is best known for The Bourne Supremacy film franchise.

Captain Phillips stars Oscar-winner Tom Hanks as Richard Phillips, whose cargo ship, the Maersk Alabama, was seized by Somali pirates off the Horn of Africa in 2009. Amid rave reviews, the real-life drama distributed by Sony's Columbia Pictures unit opened in US cinemas on Friday.

Four Somali-Americans make their screen debuts as the pirates who kidnapped Phillips in the hope of a multi-million-dollar ransom, prompting US President Barack Obama to send two US Navy ships and a contingent of Navy SEALS to the rescue.

It was the first time Obama, then in office for just three months, had dispatched the SEALS on such a high-profile mission. Two years later, the same special forces unit, including some of the same men, undertook the mission that killed Osama bin Laden.

Navy officers and others involved in the rescue, as well as Hanks, Phillips, Greengrass and Barkhad Abdi, who plays the lead pirate, attended a screening in Washington last week.

Greengrass, a former journalist, wanted the maritime saga to be balanced, telling an exciting story, but shedding light on the dire conditions in Somalia, an impoverished nation struggling for stability under a new government after decades of war.

Perhaps best known to Americans as the scene of the disastrous Blackhawk Down battle in Mogadishu 20 years ago, the country is back in headlines after a failed raid by SEALS to capture a leader of the al Shabaab Islamist militant group on Saturday.

Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for last month's attack on a Nairobi shopping mall that killed 67 people.

Piracy, that thrived amid lawlessness and poverty, has eased thanks to tighter security since 2009, but it has cost the international shipping industry - and the world economy - billions of dollars since the mid-2000s.

Greengrass said he tried for a nuanced portrayal of the pirates in the film and not Hollywood's clichéd "moustache-twisting villains."

Reuters