Cast Away Director: Robert Zemeckis Dave's Rating: C Feeling isolated in an unfamiliar locale makes most uneasy. People get delayed for a flight and have to sleep on the floor of an airport, dreaming of being home. Your car breaks down on a rarely traveled two lane highway, and suddenly you realize how vast of a road it is that you have been driving on and how barren the gravel looks. Imagine being thrust out of an airplane in the middle of the ocean and suddenly being overcome with an overbearing feeling of total abandonment and helplessness. Now imagine you are Tom Hanks trying to win an Oscar for Best Actor, and suddenly everything feels all right. I wanted to like Cast Away so much I went to the film an hour before it started. I had so many expectations going into this film. I wanted it to be full of isolation, self-discovery and a complete journey into madness. Four years on an island alone would make anyone go cuckoo. Instead all we get is Tom Hanks acting like Tom Hanks stuck on an island with a film crew. There is one word that the entire film strives for but never once achieves: detachment. Even on an island in the middle of the ocean, Tom Hanks' character Chuck Noland finds himself in a familiar luxury. I don't have to tell you what the film is entirely about because if you've seen the sneak preview for the film you already know everything that happens. Don't you love Hollywood? Federal Express is a time operated business and Chuck Noland's job is to make sure that the packages his company delivers never let time get ahead of them. He's a pseudo-perfectionist, and kind of a jerk. Chuck Noland is more worried about a package's delivery time from Memphis to Moscow than he is about the simple things in life: marriage, kids, relaxation. Helen Hunt, who seems to have built a reputation this year of making possibly good films go sour, plays Chuck's fiancée Kelly Frears in the film. He gives Kelly a pager for a Christmas present, but then slips her an engagement ring right as he's jumping on another plane to Mongolia or some foreign country to tune up the delivery clock. Tom Hanks presents Chuck as an egotistical jerk the first 30 minutes of the film before the plane crashes. He's overweight, and kind of ugly. It's a rare treat to see Hanks play anything but Mr. Wonderful, Mr. Aw-Shucks. But the jerk in Chuck goes down with the plane, and the lovable actor known as Tom Hanks rises to the surface. The scenes on the island are divided into two parts: the first months Chuck is on the island, and the last few weeks after Chuck has been a cast away for four years. We don't actually see any transformation in the character of Chuck Noland until the four-year lapse, and these scenes last far too short of a time. When Chuck or Tom (take your pick) lands on the island there is a sense of panic in him, but he never really flips out or cries to himself like any person would in the same situation. Instead we get lots of little skits where Chuck tries to open coconuts or start a fire. We get more happy Chuck than sad Chuck. People in the audience were laughing and giggling all around me. What's so funny about being left for dead? Chuck Noland becomes Tom Hanks the second he washes up on the island, and that's what hurts the film the most. It's Bachelor Party meets Swiss Family Robinson. Tom Hanks went through more of a character change in the film Big!!! I mentioned above that his character has it too easy, and a perfect example of this is that by dumb luck around a dozen Federal Express packages wash up on the shore with Chuck. It won't be much of a surprise to learn that these packages contain certain items Chuck can use for tools. Why not make all the packages contain papers and documents instead of ice skates he can use for a knife? It's too easy to give him traces of civilization, and it only furthers my point that Chuck isn't 100% isolated. It is reported that Tom Hanks took three months off from filming to make the time lapse on the island more believable. He lost the gut and grew out a beard. In this time I imagine that the director Robert Zemeckis watched all the footage they had so far and he must have realized how much of Tom Hanks' already perceived persona was in Chuck Noland. In fact I'm positive of this because when the title comes up "four years later" we suddenly have a raving lunatic stuck on an island. Chuck looks like he's part of the dawn of man evolutionary scale. He's stick and bones, dirty, and yes all you Sleepless in Seattle lovers, he probably smells like hell too. Chuck has conversations with a volleyball in which he does all the talking and the listening. He hunts and eats like a savage. Half of a Porto-Pottie washes up on the shore (?) and Chuck contemplates the half piece of plastic as if it were the coke bottle in The Gods Must Be Crazy. I wanted so much more of the caveman Chuck that we get in these few last scenes on the island before he makes his big escape. If you want emotion in a film, you have to build steps to it, and Zemeckis is trying to sidestep too often. He's taking "The same Actor-Director team that brought you Forrest Gump" credit line too much for granted. The last thirty minutes of the film is a total waste of time, and should have been completely trimmed off. There is zero emotion felt on the reunion of Chuck and Kelly, and should have been left for the alternate ending on a DVD. If you want to enjoy this film, walk out the second Chuck Noland is found and you will be far much happier with the drivel that is Cast Away. |
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