7. Captain Phillips, Pathological Liar
Columbia PicturesAnother of those hyper-real docudramas he's become known for (the Bourne films notwithstanding), Paul Greengrass's 2013 film Captain Phillips purports to recreate the boarding of a US cargo ship by Somali pirates in 2009 as accurately as possible. That Tom Hanks fella pops up again as the titular captain, whose paranoia about hijackings turns out to be totally justified. Rather than doing the whole "nyah nyah, told you so" to his disbelieving crew, though, Phillips heroically offers first the contents of the ship's safe and then himself as a hostage. Then he escapes from the lifeboat he's being held on by the pirates just in time for a team of Navy SEALS to come in and save the day. Hoo-rah! America!
What really happened: Now this one might be one of our favourites, because whilst the film's events are held up as being totally accurate by Captain Phillips himself, everybody else involved in the story disputes his recollection and essentially calls him out a big fat liar whose undercrackers are at risk of spontaneously combusting. The movie is based off a book Phillips himself wrote about the hijacking, the modestly titled A Captain's Journey, which had already caused controversy upon publication. When the big screen adaptation opened in cinemas, so did all those old wounds. "Phillips wasn't the big leader like he is in the movie," said one crew member who wanted to remain anonymous (for obvious legal reasons). "No one wants to sail with him." In the film it's Phillips who's wary of straying too close to the Somali coast, where in reality the rest of the ship begged him to stay out of the pirate's waters; they've since filed a lawsuit against the shipping company who okayed the captain's planned route, with Phillips himself being a witness for the defence. "The crew had begged Captain Phillips not to go so close to the Somali coast," said Deborah Waters, their attorney. "He told them he wouldn't let pirates scare him or force him to sail away from the coast." Greengrass has dismissed these counter-claims - as he is famously against anonymous whistleblowers - and has asserted that the film tells the true story of the hijacking. Which, to be fair, it kind of does. It just totally misrepresents the title character as a blue collar hero, when actually he was an arrogant douche who nearly got his whole crew killed.