Hanks Rescues 
Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2001)

There are some spoilers, so be warned.
To use the words of Adam Sandler in a memorable Saturday Night Live sketch, "Who are the ad wizards who came up with this one?" If you've seen a commercial or a trailer for Cast Away, you basically know everything that happens, including the ending. This ass-backwards marketing campaign almost ruined what could have been an incredibly suspenseful and absorbing film, but Cast Away is still to be appreciated for the tremendous performance of Tom Hanks.
Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a FedEx manager who is so devoted to his job that he spends Christmas not with his fiancee Kelly (Helen Hunt), but on a cargo plane flying over the South Pacific. The plane crashes, and Chuck washes up on a deserted island as the sole survivor. The scenes on the island are fascinating, because director Robert Zemeckis and writer William Broyles never cheat the premise. This is not Swiss Family Robinson, with an elaborate treehouse and monkey butlers; Chuck has only his ingenuity and the contents of a few washed-up FedEx packages to rely on. To further create the feeling of isolation, Zemeckis includes very little music, and the only dialogue is between Chuck and "Wilson" (a volleyball found in one of the packages). Wilson, in fact, deserves a place as one of the most memorable inanimate objects in film history, alongside Rosebud the sled, the Red Ryder BB gun from A Christmas Story, and Keanu Reeves.
Tom Hanks is basically asked to carry the film by himself, since if the audience doesn't care about Chuck, they won't care about the movie. The key to the performance is that Hanks takes it completely seriously; when he is trying to start a fire, you can see the intensity and desperation in his eyes as he rubs the sticks together. When he finally gets a flame going, he dances in joy and sings an endearingly off-key version of "Light My Fire" by the Doors. The audience identifies with Chuck as an average (if very smart) Joe. It is no secret that Hanks is a talented actor, but his performance in Cast Away is a step beyond anything that he has done before; he may well win his third Oscar for the role.
The scenes on the island are so good, in fact, that the final act of the film is anti-climactic. I won't spoil the ending, even though the studio did it themselves, but Zemeckis gets a little too arty for his own good. Though the point of the final scene seems to be that life goes on, there should still be come kind of finality to the movie.

Since the ending is common knowledge, Cast Away becomes more like a James Bond movie; you know that Bond is going to win in the end, it's just a matter of how he does it. Hanks and Zemeckis do such a good job of building suspense, however, it's a shame to see the film reduced to a formula.

7/10