Had potential

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2000)

...but devolved into typical shallow Hollywood fare. There were some really lovely, genuinely moving moments (like when he discovers a fellow passenger who perished in the airplane, when he is completely alone on the raft and is crying)but they were overshadowed by a lack of commitment to REALLY explore human terror and loneliness. They didn't go far enough into the insanity that was only hinted at. I found the stuff with the ball (wilson) annoying if only because it came off as cutesy instead of desperate. I had a hard time believing that he was really stuck on the Island for four years and there was little to help alleviate this feeling. I was far more focused on the knowledge that Tom Hanks had lost all that weight and was thinking of the newspaper articles I had read. The real waste for me is that the filmmakers put their toes in the water at various points in the film which showed that there was the potential for more. Robert Zemeckis should be made to take a page from the Steven Soderbergh handbook to see how you can make Hollywood movies with balls.