Another good Hanks movie

Rating: 8/10 (30 May 2006)

Tom Hanks is an interesting actor. Or rather, the reactions he provokes are interesting. There are those who love him and those who scratch their heads wondering why he has achieved such extraordinary success in his career. He is after all quite 'ordinary.' He is not a great actor, though not a particularly bad one. His main claim to fame seems to be his unfailing ability to generate sympathy from the audience for the characters he plays. You always 'like' Hanks in his film roles. Varied as they are, that's quite an achievement. And it is based on that very ordinariness that many of us seem to find perplexing.
Cast Away is a very good example of this. Hanks has to hold the attention of the audience for the bulk of the film, as he is the only human character on screen. The vast, inescapable power of the ocean and the primitive beauty of the island vie with him for that attention, but come off worst. He is certainly not the only actor who could pull this off, but it is still a neat trick and there were certainly many who felt in the run-up to the launch of the film that this would be the one that finally found him out as a rather average talent. It does no such thing.
He slowly draws you into the predicament of his character and persuades you to suspend the cynicism that might make you question a number of the events in the plot. And, true to form, he has you firmly on his side at all the most critical moments. The direction and photography both help to sustain the illusion of what you are seeing, and the plot - though faintly ridiculous - has enough meat in it to allow the drama to play out.
Though the period of isolation on the island is the main body of this film, one of the more interesting aspects for me was the way the character inter-acted with the real world. Without giving anything away, there is a deeply emotional thread to this story about an intense personal relationship that is destroyed by cruel events and this, I found to my surprise, provided some of the most impressive scenes towards the end of the film.
Rating Cast Away was for me a decision between 7 and 8. I went for 8 in the end, perhaps generously, because it is basically a feel-good movie which works. You should not watch it expecting much more than that. Few deep human questions are asked here, and when reviewing the plot after the film has finished you conclude that - even as it held your attention at the time - it was in fact quite formulaic.
Nevertheless it is, as I said, another classic Tom Hanks movie. And these have become almost a genre in themselves. If you like The Terminal, The Ladykillers, Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail, you'll enjoy this film too - essentially for the same reason: the star himself.