A Tom Hanks vehicle with Hanksisms, Hanky writing, Hanky melodrama

Rating: 7/10 (16 December 2006)

Tom Hanks stars as time-obsessed FedEx executive Chuck Noland who literally lives by the clock, even when spending time with his girlfriend (Helen Hunt) during the holidays. On Christmas Eve his beeper calls him to catch a last-minute FedEx flight to Malasya for official business and he waves "I'll be right back" before he boards. Then his plane crashes in the Pacific and Chuck is indefinitely marooned on a desert island, with only a volleyball as his company.
I have huge affection for 'desert island' premises and subscribe to the thinking that whatever you do with the execution, it will still be a wonderful experience. It simply cannot go wrong. It does not go wrong in 'Cast Away' either  although I would have loved to see more exploration of the lush island jungle  in fact, its island sequences are all golden. The only problem this film has is the lachrymose final act in which Hanks fades and director Zemeckis pulls up the directing chair and starts pouring in relations-melodrama to sew things together.
Everything up until this rote lukewarm point is well-crafted with patient strokes, courtesy of the film's protagonist. Tom Hanks, who put forward the idea for the film to Forrest Gump-pal Zemeckis, is in nearly every scene and carries so much dramatic weight, effortless leading man appeal and sympathy-laden charisma that he sucks you in entirely. Initially I applied some skepticism to judging his businessman character and it was not until the vivid, epileptic plane crash sequence that he started to absorb me. As the airplane was sinking into the deep blue with Chuck trapped inside (I can't imagine anything more frightening), you knew, judging by how much you were pulling for him, that he was our hero. This is man vs. nature at its best.
Upon waking up on the beach of the stormy desert island, Chuck is faced with some of the weapons mother nature has in her arsenal: you can feel the energy being slowly drained out of him during the first couple of days as he struggles to crack coconuts, find water, build shelter, make fire, catch fish and tend to his wounds. Insanity sweeps across the shore and Hanks aptly embodies the hard-edged, blood-spilled, sweat-dripping, tear-shedding transformation of a time-driven businessman to a primitive instinct-driven maroon. It is eerily crafted with an harmonic silence and sans your dutiful MacGyveresque inventions, scaffolds or nifty tools. Here is a mere man, seen through epic aerial shots and with underlying subtitles that spell out "desperation" and "loneliness", both of which Hanks assuredly and crisply exemplifies.
So then, what is really wrong with 'Cast Away'? Nothing  aside from marginal missteps  is wrong with the cast away part, it's the ending that that is not in-tune once Zemeckis wields his clear-cut, spelled-out and moralist trademarks. I refuse to spoil anything (mostly because I remember the film having been spoiled to me long before I sat down to watch it), just rest assured you will be begging to be taken back to the exciting island.
7 out of 10