Quietly Compelling

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2000)

How many actors would you pay to watch alone on screen for nearly an hour and a half? Casting Tom Hanks in Cast Away is a no-brainer. Not many other working actors could carry this film or even Tom Hanks' loincloth. Director Robert Zemeckis won the first battle just getting Hanks to star. He won another battle getting Fed Ex to agree to be featured in the greatest product placement since ET's Reese's Pieces. Tom Hanks plays Chuck Noland, an executive with Fed Ex, who flies from meeting to meeting on the company's cargo jets. He has to survive one of those plane's crashing and learn to thrive on a deserted island in the south Pacific. I have to admit, I was thinking about the TV show Survivor as he struggled to catch food and make fire. But, sadly for Chuck (Hanks), there were no reward challenges to provide him with the occasional call home or water proof matches. Cast Away is such an appropriate title for this film, because not only is Chuck a castaway, but for Hanks, the rest of the Cast is Away. Most people feel Tom Hanks is a talented actor, but also an interesting person, I think, someone we'd like, if we hung with the Hollywood crowd. And, whether that was Chuck Noland out there on the island or Hanks, I didn't get bored watching him get acclimated to his lonely life, because I cared about him. One of my younger co-workers says he was bothered by the fact that there was no soundtrack and the quiet of many of the island scenes. I would hate to generalize by age group, but the silence didn't disturb me at all. I didn't even notice it until later in the film when I thought, `Hey, they should have some big building orchestrated music here!' I think the lack of background noise was perfect for the movie. All you can hear most times is the relentless crashing of the waves on the beach and reef, and that's a terrific scene setter. Mostly, I love Cast Away for what was left out of the film. There are some major questions left unanswered when the credits roll. That's so cool! Studios seem to want everything tied up in a neat package at the end of movies. Could Cast Away be the start of some novel trend? Let's hope so. Cast Away is rated PG-13 for intense action sequences and some disturbing images, including the death of a toy. Cast Away earns three and a half stars, on my scale 0-5. Bottom line, if you like Tom Hanks, you'll like this movie. And, if you too live and die by time, be sure you've got two hours and 23 minutes to enjoy him.