Even the great Tom Hanks can't make Cast Away live up to its expectations.

Rating: 7/10 (29 January 2001)

Yes, Cast Away is a good movie, but it is not nearly as good as it was expected to be, especially with such big names as Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, and Robert Zemeckis, director of excellent films like Romancing the Stone, Forrest Gump, and the great Back to the Future trilogy.

However, the problem doesn't have anything to do with the director or any of the actors. As far as I'm concerned, they all delivered great performances. The general bad aftertaste that the movie leaves comes more as a result of the pathetically weak story that is thinly disguised by the big budget and the big names associated with the film. Think about it, a hard working and fairly successful man goes on a business trip, leaves his beloved soon-to-be wife behind, the plane crashes, he gets stranded on a desert island. But who cares? The only way that we are able to develop any feeling for the character is that he's Tom Hanks. Cast Away is little more than an updated (and much improved, I'll have to admit) re-telling of the old desert island story.
You have the obvious comparison to Gilligan's Island, but there are countless other places where this general premise can be found. In 1987, Christopher Walken starred in a film called The Dead Zone in which he plays a man who falls into a coma for several years after a car accident, and when he regains consciousness, he finds himself in exactly (emphasis on exactly) the same situation that Tom Hanks was in at the end of Cast Away. There's even a short story by Stephen King (who also wrote The Dead Zone) called `Survivor Type,' and you can guess what that's about. Except that in `Survivor Type,' the guy trapped on the island gets so desperate that he amputates his own foot (he had fractured his ankle trying to catch a seagull for food) and eats it, but needless to say, a Hollywood film would never get as graphic as that.
(possible spoilers ahead) The timeline of Cast Away was also a little too blocky. The film up to the point where Chuck Noland became stranded was very smooth, and then we get a good look at his realization of what has happened to him and what he does to adapt to life on the island, but then the film jumps four years into the future! I don't expect every one of Chuck's exploits to be shown onscreen, because then the movie would be four years long, but I think it was too early in the film to jump ahead that far. The rescue was probably the worst part of the film - they might have done better to just start the end credits when Chuck raises his hand to the passing ship, because to skip the entire rescue sequence and jump straight to Chuck' re-entry into civilized life is disorienting and disappointing.

There's really not much left to be done in the desert island area, but despite Cast Away's effort to resurrect the theme, there is a lot to be said in defense of the film. For example, there was clearly a lot of thought put into the content of the film, almost making up for the lacking story. Noland's relationship with `Wilson' was a crude but interesting and often amusing statement about the human need to interact, although their eventual separation was not very believable. Why didn't Chuck go get Wilson and then swim back to the raft? Did he really need to bring the raft with him? Maybe the audience was left to assume that an unseen ocean current rendered that obvious solution impossible, but I failed to see the conflict in that particular scene.
Another thing that was very successful in the film was the portrayal of Noland's predicament. Sure, it's funny at some points, but that's because it's Tom Hanks and he's just a funny guy, but that also fits perfectly with the film. Here's this guy from the big city who, judging from his substantial gut, has little experience in the outside world. Suddenly he's stuck on an island in the middle of the endless ocean, and he has no idea what to do. Nevertheless, the instinct of self-preservation kicks in and Noland finds tools for survival left and right, which was one of the things that made the film so interesting. Maybe this will teach that foolish Chuck Noland never to say, `I'll be right back.' Didn't he ever see Scream? Hanks' total physical transformation was absolutely astounding, and it magnified the effectiveness of the film at the same time as it demonstrated his dedication to the cinematic medium (you don't think he agreed to go to all that trouble because he needed money or publicity, do you?). While it is far from Hanks' best film (or Helen Hunt's, or Robert Zemeckis'), Cast Away was just about as good as it could have been, given it's tired premise and it's occasionally jerky presentation.