Review: Cast Away (2000)

This is a Resurfaced review written in 2002 or earlier. For more information, please visit this link: Resurfaced Reviews.

Cast Away

Rating

Director

Robert Zemeckis

Screenplay

William Broyles Jr.

Length

2h 23m

Starring

Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Chris Noth, Lari White, Vince Martin, Michael Forest, Jay Acovone, Garret Davis, Viveka Davis, Jenifer Lewis, Geoffrey Blake, Nan Martin, Dennis Letts, Valerie Wildman, Steve Monroe, Elden Henson, Timothy Stack, Joe Conley, Frederick W. Smith

MPAA Rating

PG-13

Review

In what could be considered a vain attempt to capitalize on the popularity of the television series “Survivor,” Fox Studios has decided to take us into the world of a man who becomes far more than lost at sea.

Tom Hanks stars as Fed-Ex troubleshooter Chuck Noland who is sent on assignment the day before Christmas and promises his girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt) that he will return in time for New Year’s Eve. When an electrical storm damages his cargo plane and it plummets into the depths of the Pacific Ocean, he washes ashore on an uncharted, deserted island. He soon discovers the islands empty and must reconcile his fate of being trapped on the island, potentially for the rest of his life.

Packages from the downed airplane drift in with the tide and begins using the contents to facilitate his survival. Of all he discovers, there is one package he never opens, the box has a pair of wings encircled by three rings. The remainder of the boxes provide plenty of normally useless utensils that he manages to put to imaginative purposes.

One of the packages contains a volleyball he lovingly paints a visage upon. He names the ball Wilson and it becomes his only companionship. He later covers the walls of his cavern sanctuary with images that help him remember what he’s lost.

Hanks spends half of the film trapped on the island and for that, we are thankful. He delivers a brazen performance of a man who loses everything and must rebuild his life from scratch. Not since “Philadelphia” has Hanks delivered a truly mesmerizing performance of this magnitude. Unfortunately, the film isn’t solely his.

He shares the screen for the opening and closing segments with the increasingly cloying Hunt. As his emotionally distraught girlfriend, Hunt continues to press her cloying “Mad About You” character on film audiences. It managed to impress the Oscars, earning her a much ballyhooed and undeserved honor. She continues to dance around the idea that all characters must inherently share the same makeup. Unfortunately, as fellow thespian Ellen Burstyn proved this year, the mold can be broken.

To say that Hunt destroyed the movie is low. Much of the problems can be attributed to the original, yet unoriginal screenplay written by “Apollo 13” scribe William Broyles Jr. What starts out as a promising tour on the island ends with a gushy, unnecessary conclusion and a finale with conclusion.

All problems aside, “Cast Away” delivers some amazing moments of cinematic beauty. The technical direction is not only top notch, but also what we’ve come to expect from action director Robert Zemeckis. The mind-numbing plane crash is enough to satisfy the average audience. The problem is that the best parts of the movie were relegated to the island where the ingenuity of the devices and situations were quite impressive.

“Cast Away” takes the best and the worst of the television series “Gilligan’s Island,” mixes in a little “Survivor” and Zemeckis’ own brand of bombast to make an entertaining if not ultimately predictable film. “Cast Away” is almost certainly a contender for audience praise and critical indecisiveness, but the true magic is the idea that when fate throws you lemons, it’s not important that you make lemonade; it’s that you stare it in the face and laugh. Don’t let the simple life bring you to a state of apathy, go out and live life to its fullest, for tomorrow you could be trapped on a mental or physical island of isolation.

Awards Prospects

Had the critics not poo-pooed the film for the most part, the film would be a far bigger contender. It’s still up for some awards, but it’s Picture and Director potential is slowly draining. Other awards that it is a contender for: Actor – Tom Hanks, Screenplay, Editing, Cinematography, Score, Art Direction, Makeup, Sound, Sound Effects and Visual Effects. Look for Hanks to be a major contender for his third Oscar.