Content Starts Here
Cast Away film review
CAST AWAY
Running time: 143 mins
Starring: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Cristopher Noth, Chris Searcy
For those who didn't notice the film's called Cast Away and not Castaway, the title sequence emphatically points out this fundamental difference. Unfortunately it's only the first of many examples of director Robert Zemeckis and writer William Broyles Jr assuming ignorance on behalf of the audience as they bludgeon home points when a simple nudge would suffice.
Cast Away reunites Zemeckis with his Forrest Gump star Tom Hanks for a story of survival, in which Hanks' character has to survive challenges to both his body and soul while Hanks himself has to survive a script that despite some good moments was often confused about its intentions.
Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a supervisor for FedEx, whose job it is to travel the globe sorting out offices that have trouble sorting. Helen Hunt plays his long time girlfriend Kelly Frears, the girl he's about to propose to when he's called away urgently from a Christmas dinner with his family. Her parting gift as he's about to board the plane is a family heirloom watch with her photo inside. His present to her is a ring box he hands over with the parting words, "I'll be right back".
Following the film's best sequence when his FedEx cargo plane catastrophically loses pressure and battles for control before finally crashing into the ocean, Noland, the sole survivor, washes up on a desert island with just a few FedEx packages for company. There he tries to come to terms with his predicament and his new surroundings. This phase of the film, with Noland as Robinson Crusoe, offers some engaging and amusing moments as he endeavours to gather food and water and make fire. With nearly an hour of little or no dialogue, it's testimony to Hanks' ability that he's able to absorb you with his daily tribulations.
During his isolation, he turns for companionship to a volleyball he christens Wilson, which was included amongst the packages his conscience eventually allowed him to open.
The problem withCast Away is its purpose. The adventure period on the island is sandwiched uncomfortably between a conventional drama. Neither component feels part of the same film, belying the dilemma faced by Zemeckis regarding exactly what type of film he was making. The opening was unnecessarily long and awkward in its establishment of Chuck's world and the ending, when he returns to civilisation following his years on the island, is again protracted and stolid. In particular Helen Hunt's charmless and mechanical portrayal of the conflicted Kelly made you wonder what Noland ever saw in her that sustained him on the island.
The ungainly inclusion of peripheral characters and their problems was a distraction and did little to speed things along while the excessive references to FedEx often made the film feel more like an extended commercial for the courier company.
Without Hanks' integrity there would be little to sustain Cast Away. It's his commitment and passion, emphasised by the film shutting down for a year while he lost 50 pounds and grew the beard appropriate for a man marooned for four years, that imbueCast Away with what vitality it possesses.
At the end, using a salvaged FedEx package as a metaphor for life's awaiting opportunities, Noland finds himself standing at an intersection deliberating which direction to go in. As heavy-handed symbolism it was yet another example of Zemeckis shouting his point rather than whispering. So deafening was the cry that it felt as though it could have been Zemeckis himself at the intersection, clutching Cast Away and wondering what direction to take it in.
Font size
Mail
My account
Help
Community
Print now
Send to a friend
Related articles
Related products
