Cast Away (2000) - IMDb IMDb 17 January 2017 4:34 PM, UTC NEWS There was an error trying to load your rating for this title. Some parts of this page won't work property. Please reload or try later. X Beta I'm Watching This! Keep track of everything you watch; tell your friends. Error A FedEx executive must transform himself physically and emotionally to survive a crash landing on a deserted island. Director: From $2.99 (SD) on Amazon Video ON DISC Famous Directors: From Sundance to Prominence From Christopher Nolan to Quentin Tarantino and every Coen brother in between, many of today's most popular directors got their start at the Sundance Film Festival . Here's a list of some of the biggest names to go from Sundance to Hollywood prominence.

a list of 36 titles created 24 Dec 2013 a list of 47 titles created 12 Jan 2014 a list of 40 titles created 22 May 2014 a list of 30 titles created 07 Apr 2015 a list of 25 titles created 17 Aug 2015 Search for " Cast Away " on Amazon.com Connect with IMDb Want to share IMDb's rating on your own site? Use the HTML below. You must be a registered user to use the IMDb rating plugin. Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 15 wins & 33 nominations. See more awards » Photos An eastern immigrant finds himself stranded in JFK airport, and must take up temporary residence there. Director: Steven Spielberg The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the US-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.

Director: Paul Greengrass A murder inside the Louvre and clues in Da Vinci paintings lead to the discovery of a religious mystery protected by a secret society for two thousand years -- which could shake the foundations of Christianity. Director: Ron Howard NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth safely after the spacecraft undergoes massive internal damage putting the lives of the three astronauts on board in jeopardy. Director: Ron Howard When a man with HIV is fired by his law firm because of his condition, he hires a homophobic small time lawyer as the only willing advocate for a wrongful dismissal suit. Director: Jonathan Demme A fisherman, a smuggler, and a syndicate of businessmen match wits over the possession of a priceless diamond. Director: Edward Zwick A struggling salesman takes custody of his son as he's poised to begin a life-changing professional endeavor. Director: Gabriele Muccino The true story of Frank Abagnale Jr. who, before his 19th birthday, successfully conned millions of dollars' worth of checks as a Pan Am pilot, doctor, and legal prosecutor. Director: Steven Spielberg Two business rivals who despise each other in real life unwittingly fall in love over the Internet.

Director: Nora Ephron Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon works to solve a murder and prevent a terrorist act against the Vatican. Director: Ron Howard An adventurous mountain climber becomes trapped under a boulder while canyoneering alone near Moab, Utah and resorts to desperate measures in order to survive. Director: Danny Boyle Years after a plague kills most of humanity and transforms the rest into monsters, the sole survivor in New York City struggles valiantly to find a cure. Director: Francis Lawrence Edit Storyline A man is marooned on an island after his plane crashes into the ocean. Far away from home, his girlfriend, and any human contact, he engages in a battle of wits with himself as he is tested mentally, physically, and emotionally in order to survive. Written by Amthermandes At the edge of the world, his journey begins. Genres: Rated PG-13 for intense action sequences and some disturbing images | See all certifications » Parents Guide: 22 December 2000 (USA) See more » Also Known As: $39,852,075 (USA) (22 December 2000) Gross: Did You Know?

Trivia Some of the 'desert island' footage was shot on the mainland with a highway in the background that had to be removed. See more » Goofs During the staying in the island, Chuck's hair looks golden blond, after being rescued, his hair looks brown dark. See more » Quotes Bettina Peterson : Where're you headed? Chuck Noland : Well, I was just about to figure that out. Bettina Peterson : Well, that's 83 South. And this road here will hook you up with I-40 East. If you turn right, that'll take you to Amarillo, Flagstaff, California. And if you head back that direction, you'll find a whole lot of nothing all the way to Canada. Chuck Noland : I got it. Bettina Peterson : All right, then. Good luck, cowboy. Wilson the Volleyball Himself See more » Connections See more » Frequently Asked Questions (United States) – See all my reviews Robert Zemeckis has his 4th best film here (behind Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future) with Cast Away.

Sure it might be overhyped and some characters in the film aren't needed (not to mention it depends on the liking of the lead), but when you have Tom Hanks working harder than any actor in a movie this year, it is worth it. The story follows Hanks as a dedicated fed-ex deliverer who has a fiance (Helen Hunt) and has to leave her Christmas time to go to Asia, but alas, the plane he's on crashes in the water and, dare I say more (well I can because practically everyone saw the all-revealing trailers)? Well, Hanks arrives on a deserted island and then the real fun begins as he survives in a primitive way (probably remenicent of 2001, Hanks' favorite film), and even finds a silent companion named Wilson (a volleyball). That Hanks can communicate with this volleyball, and almost make the ball as a real person with real feelings that is almost like the Silent Bob to his Jay, is one of the films triumphs. The others of course being the whole lot of him on the island and Hanks' performance.

If it was someone else, it would not be as successful, but Hanks gives his all and (as usual) pulls through 5 fold delivering one of the years and his best performances. A- 157 of 187 people found this review helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes Ashore Thing – EW.com Making ”Cast Away” The silence probably lasts a few seconds, but on the receiving end it feels like an eternity. You half-expect chirping crickets to break the deafening void. Or tumbleweeds to roll through the sudden loneliness of the room. Maybe even the pages of an antique wall calendar to tear off, evoking the painful passage of time. When the awkward moment comes, it runs so counter to the received wisdom on Tom Hanks that it’s hard to comprehend. All that life-is-a-box-of-chocolates hooey about his being America’s red-white-and-blue Mr. Nice Guy, or the second coming of Jimmy Stewart, becomes meaningless. Because right now, Tom Hanks is just a man. And more to the point, Tom Hanks is a man who can get a bit snippy.

Like all great actors, Hanks can enthusiastically glide through the sort of backslapping interview repartee that all Hollywood vets have to fake in the service of promoting a film. But like all flesh-and-blood mortals, he can keep up the act only for so long. Admittedly, asking the star of Cast Away how he lost more than 50 pounds to play a man stuck on a desert island isn’t the most original question. But it’s one that needs to be dutifully posed nonetheless. And clearly, it’s too much for him to bear. Hanks lets out a long sigh and his shoulders slump like a kid’s balloon deflating. His grin flattens into a grimace. And his eyes narrow into a vaguely intimidating Clint Eastwood squint. Silence. One one-thousand. Two one-thousand. Three one-thousand…. Cue sarcasm: ”Well, I’ll tell you so I don’t have to tell anyone else….” Four one-thousand. Five one-thousand. Six one-thousand…. More sarcasm in case the first sortie missed its target: ”You know coconuts? Think you can eat a lot of coconuts?

Well, let me tell you, it’s a natural laxative. So just put two and two together there. Take a coconut, drink all the milk out of it, and then eat all the insides, and you tell me how you feel after an hour and a half….” Silence. It’s obviously meant as a joke — but there’s no smile. The tense subtext is clear: Tom Hanks will not suffer fools gladly. And right now, this reporter is cast as the fool. To be fair, for most of this July afternoon Hanks is a complete gent. Later, he’ll even patiently detail his weight-loss regimen — needless to say, it wasn’t really a strict diet of coconuts and trips to the throne. Tan, muscular, and lean, the 44-year-old actor seems to have shaved 10 years off his age along with all that flab. He looks more like the man who washed up on a beach in Splash than the one who went ashore in Saving Private Ryan.

Wearing an Army green T-shirt, faded jeans, and a pair of brown suede loafers, Hanks is plopped on a leather couch in the spartan production office of his upcoming WWII miniseries, Band of Brothers (the 10-part drama, executive-produced by Hanks and Steven Spielberg and based on the Stephen Ambrose book, will air on HBO next spring). The setting: About an hour north of London, and just outside the windows of his office is a nearly abandoned airfield, where the plywood facades of about-to-be-liberated French bakeries and cathedrals make it feel like the corner of Hollywood and Rhine. Today is the final day of shooting on the only episode Hanks is directing. Sipping a cup of tea and juggling last-minute production details, Hanks explains that in this hour-long chapter, 140 British paratroopers will be rescued from the Nazis. There’s more to it than that, but Hanks’ synopsis is so jam-packed with military factoids and encyclopedic minutiae, it’s like listening to Patton audition for Rain Man.

Clearly, Hanks regards World War II with an almost reverent sense of nostalgia — the details of the battles seem to give him a peace of mind far removed from the Hollywood hamster wheel. But when the conversation circles back around to Cast Away, and how unconventional the $85 million film is — what with its entire middle act featuring the actor all alone on an island with few lines, no music score, and no voice-over narration — the two-time Oscar winner (and four-time nominee) gives the impression that he feels a bit like a prisoner of war himself. ”Look, it’s all a Hail Mary pass,” he says with a laugh. ”It’s a huge risk. And part of it is, ‘Well, why do it if it’s not a huge risk? Why go through all this stuff?’ The whole movie itself is, I think, bodaciously treading new territory.” In a way he’s right. Cast Away is probably the most experimental film the actor has made.

And despite the fact that he’s reteaming with Robert Zemeckis — the director behind his biggest box office success, 1994’s Forrest Gump — it offers the kind of one-man-without-a-net acting exercise that only a star with his fiscal track record could get a studio to greenlight. Still, there’s a defensiveness choking the air precisely because Cast Away is a new kind of animal for Hanks: a little somber, a tad arty, and following a decade-long string of box office hits, something of a commercial question mark. Not to mention that months before it’s even hit theaters, he’s had to sit through tireless comparisons between a labor of love he’s been toiling on for six years and an overnight sensation called Survivor. Frankly, the guy has a right to be snippy. Considering the almost absurd hot streak Hanks has been on for the past decade, it’s difficult to remember a time when he wasn’t quite so invincible. But scan down his resume and it’s there in black and white: The ’90s did not begin well for the actor — witness the double whammy of Joe Versus the Volcano and The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Those titles may seem like a one-two punchline now, but at the time, that pair of films represented a telling snapshot of an actor being yanked in opposite directions — the goofy, synapse-crackling cutup versus the aspiring capital-A Actor striving for leading-man gravitas. When asked, months after our initial encounter in England, if there’s one movie in particular Hanks wishes he could erase from his filmography, he chuckles: ”Oh, there’s probably a half dozen!” It’s easy to laugh now with the benefit of hindsight. Because after a rocky start, the decade has arguably been kinder to Hanks than any other actor in Hollywood. Beginning with 1993’s Sleepless in Seattle, the 10 films Hanks has starred in have grossed $1.6 billion domestically. It’s gotten to the point where seeing his name and mug on a movie poster has become a sort of Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval for a large chunk of moviegoers: This way a well-crafted mainstream blockbuster lies. ”I think you’re giving me the benefit of what has been a pretty good track record,” says Hanks modestly.

”But, you know, why didn’t they come for That Thing You Do!?” Maybe because they heard the director wasn’t any good? Hanks laughs… sort of. Even though the lackluster returns for That Thing You Do! ($26 million domestic gross) still eat at him, the film marked a crossroads in Hanks’ career: Not only was it the first time he’d stepped behind the camera as a feature-film writer and director, it was also a symbolic promotion — he’d finally earned the goodwill and creative capital to produce his own pet projects — an offer he’s taken up with Band of Brothers, his previous HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, and now Cast Away. Hanks came up with the idea for the movie six years ago. At the time, the film had the jokey, vine-swinging title Chuck of the Jungle. But Hanks says the story line he envisioned was always dead serious, almost metaphysical: Take a modern man and strip him of everything — food, water, shelter, even the ability to tell time.

Hooking up with his old friend, Apollo 13 screenwriter William Broyles Jr., Hanks decided to make his island alter ego, Chuck Noland, a FedEx troubleshooter whose life is so harried that he has to whip out his Filofax just to schedule dates with his girlfriend (Helen Hunt). Then, during a late-night courier flight over the South Pacific, Chuck’s FedEx plane crashes into the ocean. He drifts on to an uninhabited island, where he’s stranded — alone — for the next four years. Alone, that is, except for a volleyball that also washes ashore. Taking a cue from its manufacturer’s logo, Chuck names his inanimate pal Wilson. Hanks insists it’s just coincidence that his companion shares a name with his wife of 12 years, actress Rita Wilson, who joined him on the Fiji location. ”I just think Wilson was a better name than Spalding or Voit or Adidas,” jokes Hanks. Actually, the idea for Wilson originated with Broyles.

Shortly after starting the script, the writer was so stumped coming up with Chuck’s survival scenes that he traveled down to a virtually unpopulated island in Mexico’s Sea of Cortes to find out firsthand what the alienating experience would feel like. ”I had to figure out how to open a coconut because I was so thirsty, I had to figure out how to make a knife out of a rock, I had to learn how to spear stingrays,” Broyles says in a bouncy Texas twang. ”It was just a few days, but I got really lonely. And then one morning this Wilson volleyball washed up on the beach and I looked at it, and put some seashells on it, and I started talking to it…I totally went Kurtz,” jokes Broyles, referring to Heart of Darkness‘s madman. Hoping that Zemeckis might be interested in working with him again, Hanks showed the director an early script draft shortly before Zemeckis began shooting Contact. But the filmmaker didn’t think the story was fully fleshed out. ”It was a really hard movie to write because it didn’t have any conventions,” he says.

”There are no bad guys, no one’s running around chasing after microfilm… and we didn’t want to junk it up with desert island clichés.” Like…? ”Well, like anything you might have seen on Gilligan’s Island. Or the supermodel who floats up on a raft halfway through. Or pirates attacking the island.” (In fact, during postproduction Zemeckis lopped off the original feel-good ending, opting instead for a more ambiguous one.) Little did they know as they were returning from their locations in Fiji, Russia, and Texas that yet another soon-to-be desert-island cliché was hitting the pop-cultural landscape like a tsunami. Before it debuted on May 31, Survivor seemed like just another warm-weather diversion in TV’s summer replacement lineup. But as the CBS show exploded, Variety reported that audiences were greeting an early Cast Away trailer with shouts of ”Vote him off!” Hanks admits that he was initially a bit spooked by the show’s like-minded theme but adds that he always felt confident that the madness would ebb and Survivor ultimately wouldn’t trivialize their movie. ”Because I always felt we didn’t have a trivial film,” he says.

”Good or bad, we always had something that was much more substantial than what is essentially a game show that is a television phenomenon.” Adds Broyles, ”Remember, Big was like the fourth of those movies about switching bodies, and which one do you remember?” If nothing else, Hanks will be the survivor remembered for the most shocking physical transformation. Hanks credits Zemeckis with the idea of halting production so the star could go from 225 down to 170 and let his hair grow until he looked like a reefer-fried roadie for Molly Hatchet: ”Bob was like (imitates Zemeckis’ high-pitched squeak), ‘You know what we can do? If we really wanted to do this right, we’d make the first half of this movie, then take a year off and make the second half!”’ When asked what he missed most during his year of caloric deprivation (during which Zemeckis went off and made What Lies Beneath), Hanks doesn’t even pause: ”Oh, those FFs, man. Those fries from France… The only thing I did not give up was coffee…. Nope, wasn’t about to! Can’t do it!

Excuse me, no, I’m not! Ain’t gonna happen, pal!” In the first half of the movie, Hanks’ Chuck Noland makes The Green Mile‘s roly-poly Paul Edgecomb look positively svelte. But after his four-year struggle against the elements, Chuck becomes a wispy spectre with the stare of a zombie. Tom Hanks is the movie’s special effect. ”It was a burden,” says Hanks of the physical and psychological tolls exacted by the role. ”And it was a burden because I knew when the time came there wasn’t going to be anyone else to work off of.” Months later, Hanks even wonders aloud if anyone will care about his character’s solo journey. ”It’s as naked and exposed as one guy with a guitar on stage,” he says. Breaking into a country & western drawl, Hanks riffs, ”’Thanks for comin’ by, folks, I’d like to sing you a coupla little songs that I think are kinda neat and I hope you like ’em too.’ That’s exactly what it’s like. But the problem there is, Who’s gonna give a s—?

That’s really what it comes down to.” It’s hard to tell if Hanks’ nervousness is completely sincere. But he is aware that the film is his to carry. Measuring his words almost philosophically, the actor says, ”Movies are binary — they’re either ones or zeros. They either work on all cylinders, or they seem to work on absolutely none.” So was there ever a sense while he was making Cast Away that it might not work? ”That’s what we said every day: ‘This…might…not…work!’ I think that’s probably the great fear we have with Cast Away, because people are like, ‘I understand you’re on this island, and you don’t talk, and it’s just you, and you don’t do anything for an hour?’ And I’m like, ‘Well, two thirds of that is true, but that last third where I don’t do anything? Are you kidding?! I fight for my life for an hour!”’ After spending a day in Tom Hanks’ presence, a bizarre sensation starts to take hold.

Listening to him sprinkle his sentences with folksy phrases and words like dang it and jeez, it feels as if the entire room has been sucked through a wormhole back to Mayberry. For example: Tom Hanks on disappointment: ”Well, the Dodgers don’t win the pennant every year.” Tom Hanks on acting: ”I don’t want to be Coca-Cola and give up the secrets….” Tom Hanks on directing: ”There’s no way you can whip the cows faster to get to Omaha. You just have to ride back there and say, ‘Geddalong, little dogie,’ and eventually you’ll get there.” Homespun Hanksisms like these are, no doubt, largely responsible for all those comparisons to Jimmy Stewart. While Hanks says the analogies are an honor, he’d clearly prefer that folks quit bringing them up. There was some talk a while ago that Hanks might remake Stewart’s 1950 classic Harvey, but the actor never bit. ”It’s like saying we’re going to do an updated version of It’s a Wonderful Life…. Why? Leave it alone.

Harvey is perfect as is, thank you.” (Hanks begins shooting his next film, the Prohibition-era crime drama Road to Perdition, directed by American Beauty‘s Sam Mendes, in February.) Hanks’ whole Mr. Nice Guy persona has always been his biggest asset with the public: He’s funny, but he’s not in-your-face funny like Jim Carrey; he’s handsome, but he’s not a pearly-white traffic stopper like Tom Cruise. And he’s smart. Smart enough to choose the characters people want him to be: a crew-cut astronaut, a patriotic WWII captain, a compassionate death-row prison guard. ”Tom is a nice guy, but he’s not that nice a guy,” says Broyles. ”He has his irritated moments. I knew him before his sort of superstardom and I’m sure he misses just being able to go down to Dodger Stadium and sit in the stands and order a Dodger Dog.” Whether or not Cast Away becomes a hit, it’s too late for Hanks to ever go back to being that anonymous guy in the bleachers.

But it’s possible that by treading into his new film’s dark-night-of-the-soul existential waters, Hanks is trying to send a message to his fans. Maybe there’s more to his career than being Mr. Nice Guy. For now, though, all he can be certain of is that when Cast Away opens on Dec. 22, those past successes will mean squat. He’s not Jimmy Stewart or even Tom Hanks: Movie Star. He’s just another actor waiting for the public to give its verdict. ”There’s never any surety involved. None,” says Hanks, a month before the film’s release. ”Everybody assumes that there is, but that’s the glory of looking at it in retrospect. ‘Well, jeez, you had a hit movie, that must have felt good before it came out?’ I got news for you: When a movie opens, everybody (involved) is throwing up in wastepaper baskets. That’s the way it was on Apollo 13. It’s the way it was on Forrest Gump.

And it will be the same for this one.” Show Full Article Cast Away Reviews & Ratings - IMDb IMDb 406 out of 467 people found the following review useful: Applauding the guts from Japan 27 September 2001 From time to time a group of people with a lot of guts come forward and challenge something, that every average thinking producer would get nightmares to even think about making it. Fear of failing must come to mind, if the setting says: - only one actor for 80 min (and one dead body) - 40 min of it basically limited to: "Hello,.. What's that?.. Albert Miller,.. Over here,.." - no BGM - no adrenaline injections with savages, sharks, snakes etc. - just plain "Life is hard enough as it is." I loved it for: - the guts of making it - the heartbreaking and real-to-life love story - Tom Hanks' performance Was the above review useful to you?

301 out of 349 people found the following review useful: Outstanding from London, England 8 March 2002 I think this is an excellent movie..I've noticed many felt it "too long, boring, etc..." which is to be expected in today's "gimme non-stop action; I haven't been doing anything for 5 minutes, I'm bored" mentality. This was a true man vs nature movie that really made me think about what I take for granted and I found myself wondering how I would react in such a situation. Would I talk to a volleyball? you betcha...anyone who has spent any significant time alone can relate. Bought the DVD and will watch it for years too come. Was the above review useful to you? 212 out of 273 people found the following review useful: Misunderstood from Minnesota, USA 8 April 2002 I simply loved this film but was shocked by the bad reviews that people gave it. To this I say to them: You seriously misunderstood the meaning of it. Although I won't reveal any real details about the meaning because I think that you should try and understand it yourself.

The movie was terrific and simply breathless the whole time. I felt awestruck about how the life of one man could be so changed after an experience that Hanks went through. I say that every element of the film was perfect. And for those of you who hate Wilson, you have to understand about how human he really was to Chuck. I was amazed on how well this movie was made and think that everybody should have an experience that should cause you to take stock of your life. I was so adamant to get this movie; I got it at 8:00 the day it was released. I give it an 8/10. Well done Robert Was the above review useful to you? 157 out of 187 people found the following review useful: Amazing performance shines through from United States 22 December 2000 Robert Zemeckis has his 4th best film here (behind Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Back to the Future) with Cast Away.

Sure it might be overhyped and some characters in the film aren't needed (not to mention it depends on the liking of the lead), but when you have Tom Hanks working harder than any actor in a movie this year, it is worth it. The story follows Hanks as a dedicated fed-ex deliverer who has a fiance (Helen Hunt) and has to leave her Christmas time to go to Asia, but alas, the plane he's on crashes in the water and, dare I say more (well I can because practically everyone saw the all-revealing trailers)? Well, Hanks arrives on a deserted island and then the real fun begins as he survives in a primitive way (probably remenicent of 2001, Hanks' favorite film), and even finds a silent companion named Wilson (a volleyball). That Hanks can communicate with this volleyball, and almost make the ball as a real person with real feelings that is almost like the Silent Bob to his Jay, is one of the films triumphs. The others of course being the whole lot of him on the island and Hanks' performance.

If it was someone else, it would not be as successful, but Hanks gives his all and (as usual) pulls through 5 fold delivering one of the years and his best performances. A- Was the above review useful to you? 109 out of 131 people found the following review useful: What a fantastic film!!! from United Kingdom 28 July 2007 I have never seen a more meaningful and thought-provoking film. Right from the start, I knew this was going to be a classic film, and my opinion was not changed throughout the course of the movie one bit. It delivers such a strong message of fear, survival and hope, that leaves your mind devoted to thinking about it for a long while after. It made me think about all my creature comforts, and what is actually necessary in life. Talking to a volleyball has never been more dramatic! I also loved the fact that there was little talking in the film, maybe that was because i was staying in a hotel in France with french TV, but anyway, it sort of made you guess how he was feeling, in a clever way. This is one of my all time favourite films, and I could watch it again and again without getting bored...

so go and watch it...NOW!! Was the above review useful to you? 84 out of 106 people found the following review useful: Definitely worth a couple viewings. from Escondido, California, USA 14 October 2002 I'll be honest, the first time I saw this film, I wasn't too sure if I liked it. I mean, I certainly enjoyed it, but I just wasn't too sure of how I felt about the film as a whole. I must say that this film was MUCH better the second time around. And just got better with each additional viewing. I am a huge Robert Zemeckis fan, so maybe my expectations were slightly skewed at first. But, all in all, I've watched the film enough times now that I can say "I love this film!!!" When I really stop and think about it, the film is brilliantly executed. The scenery is absolutely breath taking, the special effects are so well done that you don't even realize that there are special effects present. This seems to be a trademark of Robert Zemeckis (case and point, "Forrest Gump").

The acting is very good, although, there's only 2 real sources of acting in this film, Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt. The rest of the cast was good, but their roles were very minor. Tom Hanks pulls off another great performance, as usual. You really can feel all of his emotions while he's stuck on the island. Also, not many actors have changed their physical appearance like Tom Hanks did for this film, I truly applaud him for his work. As much as I liked Russell Crow in "Gladiator", I firmly believe that Tom Hanks deserved it more (although that would be his third Oscar). Helen Hunt also pulls off a very nice performance. There is also a good deal of comedy in the film, and it is done very well. This is one of the few films that I strongly recommend you watch. There aren't a great many films that I would say this, but this one I would. Although...if you aren't a fan of Tom Hanks, then you might have some trouble with this film because a great deal of the film is him alone on an island. So, if that is the case, then you are off the hook.

So, I hope you watch the film, and I hope that you enjoy it. Thanks for reading, -Chris 13 January 2005 *** This review may contain spoilers *** I've always been intrigued with Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", particularly the importance of the items that Crusoe salvaged from the shipwreck, items that Crusoe could not have made himself and which make his survival and the relative elegance of the life he built for himself quite plausible. The real-life inspiration for Crusoe was one Alexander Selkirk who, in 1704, choose to remain on one of the Juan Fernandez islands - four hundred miles from the Chilean coast - rather than continue on a voyage with a captain and on a ship he did not trust. Selkirk was left with bedding, a firelock rifle, some powder, bullets, tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible, his mathematical instruments, and some books. Selkirk's four years on his own were a bit more austere than Crusoe's fictional life, in large measure because of his relatively meager stock of good quality tools. Selkirk also lost a lot of his social skills.

I was interested to see how Cast Away was going to solve the tool issues and how they would deal with a person living on his own for a long period of time. The solutions were simply marvelous: ice skates, volleyball, etc. Tom Hanks is superb in the role. And as a bonus, the castaway's return home is a fascinating part of the story. The driveway scene between Hanks and Helen Hunt is very powerful and reminds me of the great Emma Thompson/Anthony Hopkins 'book' scene from "Remains of the Day". Highly recommended. Was the above review useful to you? 57 out of 65 people found the following review useful: I was deeply touched ******This may contain spoilers****** It's a superb,well directed and well acted movie!Well done,Hanks!!!

I'm a Hanks fan!!!I really appreciate his outstanding performance.I consider him a genius in acting.He never just acts.However,he gives life to his characters ,and makes himself exactly what they are.Forrest Gump,Saving Private Ryan,The Terminal,The Da Vinci Code,including this movie are all my favorites.I'm always deeply touched by his movies.And they often make me cry,make me think,and make me understand more about life and love.Cast Away is without exception. I was moved by Chuck's spirits. His imagination(he names a volleyball Wilson and talks with him as a friend),his perseverance toward love,and his courage to face problems,all these enable him to survive and finally return to his homeland. When Chuck and Kelly embraced each other in the rain, I burst out crying.They are true lovers.But,fate is cruel.His beloved fiancée,his only belief during those terrible days and nights is forever gone.His hope is disillusioned.He is standing at a life crossroads,thinking and hesitating.He has to choose a way to begin his new life.

I greatly recommend this movie.Don't feel boring,just be patient.I think movies are not only seen by eyes,but also by heart.Use your heart to feel what the characters feel.Then the more you see it,the more you'll be inspired and the more you'll find.Finally,hope you enjoy other Hanks movies!!! Was the above review useful to you? 60 out of 77 people found the following review useful: well-crafted and intriguing Author: Special-K88 14 March 2002 From director Robert Zemeckis comes this powerful character study of a man and his quest for survival. Hanks is a time-obsessed postal worker on a routine cargo transport. His life is forever changed after the plane crashes and he finds himself stranded all alone on an uncharted island. We're drawn into his long, arduous journey as he struggles not only to keep his sanity, but to stay alive so he can make it back to the love of his life (Hunt).

A fascinating, believable, and thought-provoking portrait of a man and his fight to live, with a remarkably ideal performance from Tom Hanks, and steady, effectively leisure direction that allows viewers to accompany this resilient survivor on his emotionally wrenching journey. A small idea expanded into a one of a kind movie. ***½ Was the above review useful to you? 43 out of 49 people found the following review useful: It's all about love 10 October 2006 *** This review may contain spoilers *** I liked this movie, but I can't say the same for the reviews found on this website. Far too many of these fall into 2 categories: Those who thought the movie was a Crusoe-like story of survival and loved it, and those who thought the film was an ad for Fedex and hated it. But the movie is neither about "man against nature" nor about Fedex.

Cast Away is about love - about the difficulty of finding it in a world obsessed with success, about the freakish accidents that can produce or destroy it, about an ordeal that led one man to re-think what is meaningful in life, and about the need to bring to the pursuit of love the same resourcefulness and courage that enabled the hero to survive on an island for 5 years. Tom Hanks is superb as Chuck Noland - creating immense sympathy for an ordinary guy trapped - not against his will - in a job that is eating him alive. How many actors could have made Noland's attachment to "Wilson" believable? Yet Hanks does. The last section of the film, much reviled by many, is immensely touching. Noland has survived 5 year's of utter isolation hoping to be reunited with his fiancé and has resigned himself to death at least a few times before he is miraculously rescued. Anyone who remains dry-eyed during his meeting with Kelly, when their rich feelings are both acknowledged and of necessity abandoned - is unworthy of being allowed in the theater to see a film of such quality as this one. That Noland's hard-earned wisdom about love and family will not be wasted makes for a marvelous ending to the film.

It has required all of his ingenuity and endurance to survive on the island. It will now require strength of a different kind to accept the irrevocable loss of Kelly and open himself to a new experience, perhaps with Bettina. The last scene, with Noland standing at the crossroads, as the haunting theme is reprised for the last time, as Bettina drives toward her house and as Hanks looks into the camera with new-found resolve - is classic - though again, cynics are absolutely barred from enjoying it. Was the above review useful to you?

Page 1 of 106: Cast Away (2000): original Telegraph review - Telegraph Culture Reviews Cast Away (2000): original Telegraph review Cast Away saw Tom Hanks cast adrift with no sign of a plot, said Andrew O'Hagan in the Telegraph in 2000 2 Cast Away: Tom Hanks, as stranded plane crash survivor Chuck Noland, talks to 'Wilson' in the 2000 movie By Andrew O'Hagan 9:00PM GMT 27 Dec 2013 In Cast Away, Tom Hanks is hardly credible as a man surviving alone on a desert island and the movie itself is beyond belief. We are only really interested in two things: how he copes with the first day, and how he gets rescued on the last. Too many movie characters nowadays go on as though they can't wait to be movie characters. You would never see a big-budget Hollywood film about a plumber and think, oh, there's a plumber, I wonder where the leak is. You see the plumber and think, oh, I wonder at what point in this movie we'll see him appear on the cover of Time magazine.

There's nothing real about these people; they have "full serial rights available" grafted on to their smiles. For me this is the reason that so many big films are unbearable. At the end, no one is allowed to just walk off, or even ride into the sunset, because the only meaningful denouement in these movies – and Cast Away is a prime example – is for the characters to be caught up in a modern media frenzy. Welcome to tabloid cinema. It's usually easy to tell that you're watching one of these films: Tom Hanks's name is above the title. Well, that's not entirely fair. He has been in some OK movies, such as Philadelphia and The Green Mile , in which the situations somehow denied him a clear opportunity to be a poster boy for the survival of the human spirit. But more typical of the man is Forrest Gump, a film about an idiot who made even bigger idiots feel good about themselves. It brought Hanks an Oscar and a reputation as a malleable lump of box-office gold. That film was directed by Robert Zemeckis , who is also behind Cast Away, and once again the pairing has come up tabloid trumps.

Let me challenge you from the outset: if you are able to identify one human or dramatic subtlety in this whole package I'll eat every last coconut from the islands of Fiji to the ridges of Pukapuka. That is, if Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) doesn't beat me to it. We first meet our hero as he is shouting time-management slogans at a bunch of lazy, vodka-sodden Russians unlucky enough to work at the Moscow depot of Federal Express. Chuck is a regular Chuck: easy-going, tough when he needs to be, he is out to show the poor Russians the value of the equation that time equals money. It is all biz, biz, biz, the philosophical point of which will become clear only when Chuck is stranded on a desert island and has so much time on his hands that he has to spend his waking hours deep in conversation with a blow-up volleyball. But for now, Chuck is just a busy old American bee, a man hinged to (and unhinged by) the rapidity of modern international communications. This is so true that Chuck doesn't even have time to enjoy Christmas dinner with his girlfriend, Kelly (Helen Hunt), before scarpering to the FedEx gate at the airport.

As he scurries off, she gives him a timepiece with a picture of herself inside; he gives her a box that can only contain a ring. He says that he'll be right back, but we know that must be a lie. ET said the same thing. The plane goes down over the Pacific. Somehow, though, for Chuck, it's like a lilo falling into a swimming pool, and we soon see him scrabbling up some jaggy rock, albeit in torn vest and a bit out of breath. As you see Chuck wading up the beach of some God-forsaken island, FedEx parcels arriving in his wake, you begin to wonder if the whole film isn't a sneaky advertisement for the virtues of DHL. But no, we are in the company of the cinema's most likeable man, our new Robinson Crusoe, and we begin to feel sorry for him.

Related Articles (310) 277-2211 Content: (B, C, H, L, VV, N, A, D, M) Vaguely moral worldview with very slight Christian content, as well as some totemism, humanism & existential fatalism; 5 lightweight exclamatory profanities, such as “my God,” & 4 obscenities; action violence including frightening storm, flight attendant gets hit on head producing copious amounts of blood, plane sinks into ocean, man rides out storm, man gets cut & bruised, man gashes leg on coral, & man knocks out his own impacted tooth with a rock & an ice skate; no sex, but kissing; upper male nudity & man in underwear; drinking, smoking; and, man takes pride that he stole or borrowed a little child's bike to complete his Federal Express delivery, man lies about his wife & man talks to totem that he creates. Summary: In CAST AWAY, Tom Hanks plays Chuck Noland, an international troubleshooter for Federal Express whose plane crashes over the Pacific Ocean, and so he has to survive for four years on a desert island.

Tom Hanks does a superb job, but some of the minor characters are stilted, the plot does not run smoothly, much of the movie seems like an advertisement for Fed Ex, and the movie ends on a fatalistic note. Review: CAST AWAY is a movie that you’d like to like, especially since it stars the likeable Tom Hanks and has been produced by many likeable entertainment industry people. Furthermore, CAST AWAY is a movie that has a good heart and wants to make some moral points. However, in the final analysis, CAST AWAY is easy to criticize, which is highly regrettable. Tom Hanks plays Chuck Noland, who is an international troubleshooter for Federal Express. The movie opens with the delivery of a Federal Express package in Moscow that Chuck shipped to himself so that he could see how long the delivery took. He tells his Moscow team that time is everything, that they cannot be a minute late. Then, he flies back to Memphis to see his girlfriend, Kelly. They want to spend some quality time together, but he is called immediately to Southeast Asia to deal with another Fed Ex problem. Halfway over the Pacific Ocean, his plane is brought down by a terrible storm. Chuck is the only survivor.

He reaches a small, deserted island and survives against all odds for four years. Improvising tools out of things he found in Fed Ex boxes such as ice skates and a Wilson basketball, which he turns into a totemistic friend, to whom he talks constantly. After many harrowing experiences, even attempting suicide, he decides to get off the island at all cost. He’s been there for 1500 days, or more than four years. He even put a cross on the highest point. Miraculously, he survives a difficult journey on a wood raft, and comes back to find out that the world is not what he expected. Tom Hanks does a superb job in the role of Chuck. Some of the minor characters, however, are slightly stilted. Furthermore, the plot does not run smoothly. There are several plot problems that are solved by a deus ex machina, such as a whale that revives him in critical moments or the Wilson totem that seems to help him create fire. Furthermore, much of the movie seems like an advertisement for Fed Ex, and one can only hope that they paid for this long commercial.

The most disappointing part of the movie, however, is that it ends on an existential fatalistic note, summarized by the phrase, “what the tide can bring.” Like THE KID and FAMILY MAN, it is clear that Chuck is supposed to learn some lessons, such as Hollywood's favorite theme that there is more to life than work. Of course, there’s also more to life than no work on a desert island. There are some slight Christian hints in the movie, but they are very slight, such as the recurring theme of angel wings and what could be construed as a cross that Chuck plants on the top of the mountain on his island. Furthermore, Chuck always makes the right decision, even rejecting adultery, but often his heart is not in it. On the other hand, CAST AWAY is a very entertaining movie. Tom Hanks pulls off a tour de force with his solo performance. The cinematography is beautiful, and everybody ooh-ed and ah-ed about it at the screening, and the special effects are superb. In Brief: CAST AWAY is easy to criticize, which is regrettable. Tom Hanks plays Chuck Noland, an international troubleshooter for Federal Express who is ruled by the clock.

Over the Pacific Ocean, his plane crashes, and Chuck has to survive for four years on a desert island. After many harrowing experiences, he survives a difficult journey on a wood raft and comes back to find out that the world is not what he expected. Tom Hanks does a superb job, but some of the minor characters are slightly stilted, and the plot does not run smoothly. Furthermore, much of the movie seems like an advertisement for Fed Ex. The most disappointing part of the movie, however, is that it ends on an existential fatalistic note. Like THE KID and FAMILY MAN, it is clear that Chuck is supposed to learn some lessons, such as Hollywood's favorite theme that there is more to life than work. Of course, there’s also more to life than no work on a desert island. There are some slight Christian hints in the movie, but they are very slight. On the other hand, the cinematography is beautiful, and the special effects are superb Cast Away Cast Away Director: Robert Zemeckis. Cast: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Chris Noth. Screenplay: William Broyles, Jr.

When I prayed to the film divinities that I wanted less Tom Hanks at the movies, I didn't just mean that I wanted him to be thinner. To be honest, I think Hanks is a perfectly adequate actor. I think he's contributed his best work in goofy comedies (Splash, The Money Pit, Big) and in animated marvels (the original Toy Story and its sequel ), though I realize the current vogue is to assess his career primarily as a series of dramas. My problem is less with him than with his project choices, since this actor seems innately drawn to all but unfinished material. The movies tend to tell us things we already know, for example that war and space disasters are hell, but at least America is, like, the greatest. Sometimes they actually tell us things that offend me, like that history is best endured (triumphed over?) via conservatively couched idiocy (Forrest Gump), or that it's okay and perhaps touching to be gay so long as you don't kiss your lover, or even touch much (Philadelphia).

Even his awards acceptance speeches, of which there have been so dizzyingly many, strike me as refreshingly sincere and genuinely grateful, but then they turn unbelievably florid and highfalutin, and I stop understanding what he's saying&#151the same way I think my dad felt when Maya Angelou read her 1992 inaugural poem. What is Tom's body of work, which seems inseparably to comprise his roles and his own persona, meant to tell us? He's touted as one of Hollywood's most decent men, which I do not doubt, but he is also touted as among its most articulate and liberally compassionate, and here I must dispute. He is the star par excellence of movies that seem somehow "affirmative," but have a heck of a time getting through the Trough of Clich&#233s that lies between points A and B. For all of these reasons, I thought it might be good for Tom, as well as for me, that Cast Away seemed so baldly like an apolitical, resolutely populist fable, with some modest experimentation thrown in: Tom Hanks is stranded, at the very edge of the world.

If there's anyone whose entire recent career has prepared him to play a Civilization Of One, it is this man. I haven't heard anything this high-concept since Jack Nicholson As Werewolf, or at least Jim Carrey As Grinch. The sum of all this hype, however, this alleged change of direction, is that Tom has indeed refrained from feeding us some crystallized political homily or dubious jingoistic anthem. This time, he has settled for a film that tells us nothing. Which is not to say that the film adds up to nothing. The true fact is something much more intriguing, maybe even without peer in the recent years of Hollywood movie-making&#151a film that exists entirely, for better or for worse, and with great self-conscious intent, by virtue of what it is not, what it lacks. In the neutral and good columns, these things: no flags, virtually no costars, virtually no dialogue, and virtually no emotion-cuing music. (He still gets a big bleeding-heart speech, but it'll take more than a desert island to yank that away from Tom.) In the negative column, and it's a big negative: no point.

The film na�vely keeps returning to images of Hanks' character, Chuck Noland, standing in the middle of an arid crossroads, ostensibly to indicate, albeit with staggering literalness, the many uncertain paths in which his life could move. Instead, the movie manages to epitomize itself in those mantra-like shots: it's got Tom Hanks, who looms above his flat surroundings, but the film has nowhere to take him, no direction for his story to take. In this case, it is required to thumbnail the movie's plot starting at the middle, rather than the beginning. The central 90 minutes or so of Cast Away, as its title indicates, portray the attempts of Hanks' Chuck, the lone survivor of a plane crash in the South Pacific, to stay alive on the unpopulated atoll where he washes up. With no one to talk to but a volleyball (necessity, as we know, is the mother of invention), Chuck has to adapt shelter, preserve his clothing, gather food, patrol for animals, and signal any plane or watercraft that should errantly pass near his remote coordinates.

The technical challenge here is impressive, since Hanks has to act opposite nothing, and cinematographer Don Burgess, editor Arthur Schmidt, and director Robert Zemeckis&#151all vets of the Gump Machine&#151have to keep the audience in their narrative and visual grip. I rarely caught Hanks doing anything completely unfamiliar with stories in this genre, from Robinson Crusoe to Six Days, Seven Nights , but nor was I ever bored. The actor is, as ever, an economical communicator of rational process, not necessarily an easy state to convey on film. This is a movie largely of Tom Hanks thinking, and without breaking much new ground, he does keep the picture itself from breaking, and that's a creditable feat. Still, it's also an easy feat to overvalue, because, as with Saving Private Ryan , the tougher passages are generously padded with long stretches that make us feel good, even if they don't seem like a tonal or thematic match with the rest of what we've been watching. The entire opening chapter emblematizes this flaw.

The sequence is far too long, stretching to include scenes of Chuck marshalling his FedEx crew in Moscow; Chuck eating a Christmas dinner; Chuck making goo-goo eyes at his fianc&#233e Kelly (Helen Hunt, trying to fill holes); and the horrific airplane explosion that produces his predicament. Of all these events, the plane crash deserves extraordinary credit from an editing and effects standpoint, but it immediately raises another problem. Zemeckis is chronically guilty of making movies that play like individual scenes he was excited by, strung together by narrative passages that feel uniform, even neglected. Remember, for example, how routine What Lies Beneath becomes except in the "bravura" set pieces (the bath tub, the dock) that strive to justify the whole movie being made. The plane crash is impressive, but it flaunts its impressiveness as a raison d'�tre, and makes the chubby, repetitive scenes preceding it seem even chubbier. Do these filmmakers know that one shot of Hanks barking orders in a warehouse, while wearing a FedEx hat, would communicate everything we get out of the film's first ten minutes?

Again, I've got no quibble with the island sequences, but because this is an American movie, and a Hanks movie, Cast Away decides that Chuck's gotta get back home. Don't even talk to me about the fact that this man constructs a raft with spring-loaded windsail and collapsible flaps to get home; clearly, this is a story about a "normal man" struggling to survive only to the extent that being a mechanical engineer and beginner's-luck flotation seafarer are "normal." Certainly don't talk to me about the whales we meet during those lonely ocean nights; the shot of a yellow mechanical eyeball rising from the deep to blink at Chuck mostly serves to confirm that a film which has admirably denied itself cheap narrative tricks and stunt effects for an hour and a half is happy to trot them out by the end. Cue also that awful string music&#151fear not, ladies and gentlemen, your mood will be assigned before the picture is over. All of that would be more forgivable if Cast Away had any idea what to do with Chuck, or with itself, when he returns to the United States.

For a while, we think we're getting a reinitialization drama&#151can Chuck relearn how to live in the world's most technologically pampered country? Then we sink into an unbelievably ill-choreographed, protracted romantic reunion thing&#151will Kelly abandon the man she married during Chuck's four-year absence, and return to the man she thought was dead? The script, by William Broyles, is as doggedly loyal to Kelly as Chuck is. It won't let her go, even though she couldn't be more thinly drawn or peripheral. Hanks' fifth-act, nomination-begging speech is about how everything he survived seems small and unimportant if he can't have this woman he loved&#151and I'm sorry if that seems more like a concession to ticket-buyers than a genuine outgrowth of what this material is about. Let me finally mention, too, that we learn only after Chuck returns home that he was for a long time suicidal on that island, and attempted to hang himself, but we realize we never saw that Chuck.

The dissolve that gets us from his first weeks of strandedness to his fourth year nicely convey us from the resolve of a recent shipwreck to the resolve of someone determined to get home; like every other Hanks "drama," Cast Away reveals itself to have been safely laundered of its darker patches, which undoubtedly would be the most interesting. I do not say so because I am morbidly fixated on watching people who think they are going to die. I say so because this material insists, as do its press releases, that Cast Away is about existential despair, or the triumph of the will over adversity, or some such theme, but the film is too bashful to hit the bottom-most circles of that adversity. Perversely, Toy Story was infinitely more honest in staring down Woody's uncertainty that Andy would ever find him again. Like Chuck's own body, which is demurely covered by a loincloth after four years of no neighbors, Cast Away tucks anything that might be hard to look at out of our field of vision. When all is said and done, this is solitude made cozy, aloneness with perks.

Without a full-on commitment to Chuck's plight while he's amidst it, and without any certainty where to follow him after his return, the movie is handicapped from telling his story. Hanks also is denied (or denies himself) the challenge of summoning up a dark side, and Chuck is finally a cipher. There is too much the filmmakers have elected not to do or show, or not to think through fully, so it's the movie and its perennially misbegotten star which in the end are cast away. C Academy Award Nominations:

Question: In the film "Cast Away", what company does Tom Hanks work for?
Answer: FedEx