Well, Hanks is good.

Rating: 7/10 (29 December 2000)

There are movies that are part very good but in the whole unsatisfying. This is one. The plane crash and struggle to the island are well shot. Hanks is great in his struggle to survive on the island both physically and mentally. Wilson as a companion and primitive god is a good device. Unfortunately the love story that surrounds the action in the movie's construction is too thin and doomed from the outset to eliminate any reasonably "happy" or meaningful conclusion. Two people pretty well absorbed by their respective careers, Hanks a Fedex exec and Hunt working on a PhD, cannot quite find time or the full commitment to formalize their relation. A dramatic accident that creates the action and one person show for Hanks. Finally, rescue after 4 years and confrontation with Hunt who has moved on. Hunt however does deliver both a "you are the love of my life" speech and a "I had a really hard time after you were lost" line. Please. How could Hanks have a meaningful relationship with Hunt if she honestly believed that her hard times had any comparative aspect to being lost on an island for 4 years of near Hellish suffering? Who can believe that Hanks would want or expect Hunt to leave a husband(why cast "Big" from Sex in the City?) and child? The three items that kept Hanks going were Wilson ( a mixture of god and inner values), the package ( a commitment) and the picture of Hunt (love interest). In the end he's left Hunt, delivered the package and lost Wilson. Yes he can wander any of the roads open to him as in a new life. No, it doesn't make sense or pull the movie together.