Fishing Without Nets

Cutter Hodierne's gorgeous, harrowing debut feature, Fishing Without Nets, doesn't just ask you to feel a bit for Somali pirates, as Captain Phillips did -- Hodierne puts you in their shoes.

Cutter Hodierne makes an accomplished feature debut with this very well-crafted, empathetic hijacking drama.

Fishing Without Nets turns the hijacking drama into a morally murky contemplation of deprivation and desperation.

Cutter Hodierne's Fishing Without Nets is a tense drama with well-drawn characters and only as much action as its story requires.

Though this setup is perhaps infused with too much piety, cheating audience empathy toward the main character, it nonetheless generates a compelling air of social fatalism.

Hodierne’s intentions were unquestionably good—he spent years researching the short and feature, working with Somali non-pros—but he still managed to fall into the same trap as the other American films on this subject, focusing on individuals rather than group dynamics.

Although director and co-writer Cutter Hodierne tells the story from the pirates' viewpoint, he adds no more dimension to them than the one we saw in "Phillips."