Never commit the sin of turning your back to this one...

Rating: Null/10 (11 February 2010)

We often find ourselves at crossroads, wondering where to go and what to do next. The ambiguous expression on our faces probably would not be any different than Tom Hanks' when he stares right at us before the screen fades away, thus leaving things to our own interpretation. It is also up to us to conjure what could have been inside that FedEx box that supposedly saved Tom's character Chuck Noland's life, which he leaves at the door of a house in rural Texas. Could it have been a satellite phone?-what an irony it would have been had it been revealed.
An open mind and a sense of adventure is what Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks expects the audience to bring along to this movie. In a way it is a thinking man's movie because it is a little slow for a generation fed on YouTube clips, has no dialogs or music for several minutes, and the ending is not the dessert that an average moviegoer would like after such a lengthy feast. My qualms, however, are with the part when Chuck rejoins civilization after living on a deserted island for four years. His interaction with people, especially Kelly (Helen Hunt) is, for the lack of a better word, average and mirrors the humdrum of life, which is the last thing you would expect from a character that has put the taste of such a sweet performance in your mouth. The writing here is not at par with the golden second half. The soliloquy that Tom's character deliver, however, is a gem and it captures his state of mind after suffering in isolation for years and the pain that he felt after losing the love of his life all over again.
Interestingly, for the time bound Chuck Noland (No-Land – get it?), a systems engineer for Fed Ex, no thought of a life altering event or the fear of losing his girlfriend had probably ever occurred except the fear of running out of time. And in a bid to beat time, he ignores his health and even proposes to Kelly in the car en route to board a last minute flight to Malaysia, which unexpectedly crashes (a very scary and a believable plane crash) and he finds himself marooned on a deserted tropical island with nothing but a broken watch and all the time in the world to ponder on his future. The scenes featuring an overweight workaholic's struggle to survive on an uninhabited island are by far the most intriguing ones ever recorded on film. And Tom Hanks fails not once, not even by chance. Very soon his struggle becomes our struggle as he learns how to use day-to-day objects as tools of survival, how to crack coconuts, how to fish, how to build a shelter, how to light a fire, and most importantly how to survive the odds without any human contact. A volleyball named Wilson fills this gap for him and becomes as real to him as Kelly was in his past. His faith in his love and a strong desire to see Kelly helps him survive on that island.
Cast Away benefits mainly from another amazing performance by Tom Hanks. He, right from the beginning, has us believing that his character, a typical worker bee, will probably continue to live like this forever and never suspects a life altering event to strike him ever. But once this event strikes and takes it toll, it leaves him at a crossroads; his conscience, once a mere cog in a massive clock, becomes ambivalent because it now holds the wisdom of what time can do to you and constantly reminds him of how uncertain his life has been and that his future or rather his notion of future will never be the same. And this wisdom, disguised as an ambiguous expression, is the reflection of our own dilemma of never knowing what he would do next