Too much Memphis

Rating: 7/10 (3 January 2001)

If they had started the story in the plane, with all the courier packages (which company did Chuck Noland work for again?) that would have been fine. Noland could look at the watch his girlfriend gave him, but then something goes wrong and the plane goes down.
***SPOILER AHEAD*** From this moment on the movie could play out exactly as it did until the moment the ship passes by his raft. Why couldn't the movie end there and simply be about what drove this guy to survive for four years? It's the meat of the movie, and it's wonderful. By hiring a big star like Helen Hunt, Zemeckis and company forced themselves to supply her with a big role, and a satisfactory ending became an impossibility.