Q&A USA

Richard Phillips takes command of MV Maersk Alabama, an unarmed container ship from the Port of Salalah in Oman, with orders to sail through the Gulf of Aden to Mombasa, Kenya. Wary of pirate activity off the coast of the Horn of Africa, he and First Officer Shane Murphy order strict security precautions on the vessel and carry out practice drills. During a drill, the vessel is chased by Somali pirates in two skiffs, and Phillips calls for help. Knowing that the pirates are listening to radio traffic, he pretends to call a warship, requesting immediate air support. One skiff turns around in response, and the other – manned by four heavily armed pirates led by Abduwali Muse – loses engine power trying to steer through Maersk Alabama's wake.

The next day, Muse's skiff, now fitted with two outboard engines, returns with the same four pirates aboard. Despite the best efforts of Phillips and his crew, the pirates secure their ladder to the Maersk Alabama. As they board, Phillips tells the crew to hide in the engine room and allows himself to be captured. He offers Muse the $30,000 in the ship's safe, but Muse's orders are to ransom the ship and crew in exchange for millions of dollars of insurance money from the shipping company. While they search the ship, Murphy sees that the youngest pirate Bilal does not have sandals and tells the crew to line the engine room hallway with broken glass. Chief Engineer Mike Perry cuts power to the ship, plunging the lower decks into darkness. Bilal cuts his feet when they reach the engine room, and Muse continues to search alone. The crew members ambush Muse, holding him at knifepoint, and arrange to release him and the other pirates into a lifeboat. However, Muse's right-hand man Nour Najee refuses to board the lifeboat with Muse unless Phillips goes with them. Once all are on the lifeboat, Najee attacks Phillips, forcing him into the vessel before launching the boat with all five of them on board.

As the lifeboat heads for Somalia, tensions flare between the pirates as they run low on the plant-based amphetamine khat and lose contact with their mother ship. Najee becomes agitated and tries to convince the others to kill Phillips. They are later intercepted by the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Bainbridge. Bainbridge's captain Frank Castellano is ordered to prevent the pirates from reaching the Somali coast by any means necessary. Even when additional ships arrive, Muse asserts that he has come too far and will not surrender. The negotiators are unable to change his mind and a DEVGRU SEAL team parachutes in to intervene, while Phillips makes an unsuccessful attempt to escape from the lifeboat before being quickly recaptured and repeatedly beaten by Najee.

While three SEAL marksmen get into positions, Castellano and the SEALs continue to try to find a peaceful solution, eventually taking the lifeboat under tow. Muse agrees to board Bainbridge, where he is told that his clan elders have arrived to negotiate Phillips's ransom. In the lifeboat, Phillips prepares a goodbye letter to his wife in case he is killed, while Najee decides to take full control. Najee spots Phillips writing the letter and beats him further. Phillips retaliates by wrestling Najee until Bilal subdues Phillips by striking him in the back with his AK-47, injuring him. Najee convinces Bilal and Elmi that Phillips must be killed. The pirates tie up and blindfold Phillips, leaving him to say his final goodbyes. As the pirates prepare to shoot Phillips, Bainbridge's crew stops the tow, causing Bilal and Najee to lose balance. This gives the marksmen three clear shots and they simultaneously kill all three pirates. Muse is arrested and taken into custody for piracy. Phillips is rescued from the lifeboat and treated. Although in shock and disoriented, he thanks the rescue team for saving his life.

Before the credits it is revealed Richard Phillips soon returned to sea after his recovery while Abduwali Muse was sentenced to 33 years in jail for orchestrating the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama, and the kidnap and attempted murder of Richard Phillips.

Nine-year-old Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn), who suffers from Asperger syndrome, is the son of German American Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks). Thomas would often send Oskar on missions to do something involving one of his riddles. The last riddle he ever gives Oskar is proof that New York City once possessed a Sixth Borough. In a flashback, Thomas and Oskar play a scavenger hunt to find objects throughout New York City. The game requires communication with other people and is not easy for the socially awkward Oskar who is told "If things were easy to find, they wouldn't be worth finding".

On September 11, 2001, Oskar and his classmates are sent home from school early while his mother Linda (Sandra Bullock) is at work. When Oskar gets home, he finds five messages from his father on the answering machine saying he is in the World Trade Center. When Thomas calls for the sixth time, although Oskar is present to answer this call, he is too scared to answer. The machine records a sixth message which stops when the building collapses. Oskar knows his father has been killed and falls to the floor. He replaces the answering machine with a new one and hides the old one so his mother will never find out.

A few weeks after what Oskar calls "the worst day," he confides in his German grandmother and they become closer. Oskar's relationship with his mother worsens since she cannot explain why the World Trade Center was attacked and why his father died. Oskar tells his mother he wishes it had been her in the building, not his father, and she responds, "So do I". After, Oskar says he did not mean it, but his mother doesn't believe him.

A year later, Oskar finds a vase in his father's closet with a key in an envelope with the word "Black" on it. He vows to find what the key fits. He finds 472 Blacks in the New York phone book and plans to meet each of them to see if they knew his father. He first meets Abby Black (Viola Davis), who has recently divorced her husband. She tells Oskar she did not know his father.

One day, Oskar realizes that a strange man (Max von Sydow) has moved in with his grandmother. This stranger does not talk because of a childhood trauma caused by his parents' death in World War II. He communicates with written notes and with his hands which have "yes" and "no" tattooed on them. As they become friends and go together on the hunt to find what the key fits, Oskar learns to face his fears, such as those of public transport and bridges. Eventually, Oskar concludes that the stranger is his grandfather and plays the answering machine messages for this stranger. Before playing the last message, the stranger cannot bear listening any longer, this message being his son's last words, and stops Oskar. Later on, the stranger moves out and tells Oskar not to search anymore.

When Oskar looks at a newspaper clipping his father gave him, he finds a circled phone number with a reference to an estate sale. He dials the number and reaches Abby, who wants to take Oskar to her ex-husband, William, who may know about the key. William (Jeffrey Wright) tells Oskar he has been looking for the key. William had sold the vase to Oskar's father who never knew the key was in the vase. The key fits a safe deposit box where William's father left something for him. Disappointed and distraught because the key does not belong to him, Oskar confesses to William that he did not pick up the phone during his father's sixth and final phone call and then goes home.

Oskar's mother tells Oskar she knew he was contacting the Blacks. She then informs him that she visited each Black in advance and informed them that Oskar was going to visit and why. Oskar makes an artbook-like scrapbook filled with pop-ups and pull tabs like a children's book, of his scavenger hunt and all the people he met and titles it "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." At the end of the book there is a pull tab, showing an animation in which Thomas's body is falling up instead of down.

Oskar's grandfather returns to live with Oskar's grandmother.