Mercedes. They're both cars but one has so much more than the other.
The story in Cast Away is quite simple. Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) is a FedEx executive who goes from country to country to direct big delivery operations. During Christmas which he spends with his girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt), Chuck gets a call that he is needed in Malasia. So he gets on the plane, and guess what? The plane goes off cource and crashes into the South Pacific. Using an inflatable life raft, Chuck reaches a deserted island where he has to adapt to the environment in order to survive. I might as well say this since it was revealed in the trailer, but if you haven't seen it, you might want to skip to the next paragraph. In the end, Chuck manages to make it back to civilization.
Cast Away is a unique movie. It's light-hearted yet serious. It's funny yet sad. For the most part it's a conventional movie but the ending ins't. I'm glad Zemeckis didn't go for a happy ending. It wouldn't have ruined the film, but that way Cast Away would be just a clever, interesting adventure/comedy and not a dramatically satisfying film that's all those things too.
Even though I'm not his biggest fan, I have to admit Tom Hanks is excellent. I think he has yet another shot at Oscar gold. Helen Hunt, appearing in a movie this year for the 4th time, is very good although she has an obviously limited screen time since Cast Away is mostly about Hanks' adventures on the island.
Zemeckis, famous for making crowd-pleasing blockbusters, while not a genious, is a very talented director and he shows that with this film. I think he works great with Hanks and I'm surprised there haven't been more collaborations between the two. The script by William Broyles Jr. is also top-notch. Cast Away offers some very inventive ideas on how a man might survive in such a situation.
In the end, Cast Away isn't just a simple survival tale, although it's great at that, it's more. It's a serious film about the human spirit and how living in isolation might affect a man. I'm glad they still make movies like this. |
