A furiously busy El Cosmico here, taking a break once again from business and technical matters to blurt out blather. Or something.
SPOILER-FREE...Yes, I saw CAST AWAY, the flick for which Tom Hanks now has the New York Film Critics' award for best actor...is that right? Oh, I have such misgivings about this.
Maybe I just expect too much these days. Maybe it's that I've seen too many Tom Hanks films, and they're all running together. No, that's not it.
I think my problems with CAST AWAY come more from what I feel is an overly positive reaction from the critical press. This site included. Harry and Quint can't say enough wonderful things about it. The NYFCritics say it's "da bomb"...or words to that effect. Hype hype hype. And, a little more hype.
Yes, I think that's probably the root of my ill feelings toward this film. It's called wildly inventive and wonderfully original, daringly experimental, and lots of other positive adverb-adjective combinations. Oh, folks, I just don't think it deserves the extremity of these platitudes. Breaking a multitude of conventions? Hardly.
To be sure, this film doesn't suck. Hanks isn't incompetent. The script isn't what I would call awful. We are safely away from such terrible conditions. Instead, CAST AWAY is merely a decent film. The script is well-done enough, but hardly inspired. The choices are obvious, and really, not surprising at all. Whether you've seen the trailer or not.
It's true, there are moments of silence. Times when Tom wanders the island, beard growing all-the-while, having a look-see, encountering a problem here or there. Then, he speaks to a ball. An imaginary friend of sorts. Well, that's fine, certainly understandable. This, we are told, though, is a possible reason for Oscar nomination. I hate to say it, because I do like Tom Hanks, but the first phrase that pops into my head when I hear Oscar talk is "What a load of crap." Folks, to me a display of great acting ability is the creation of an entirely new and immersive character that is defining not only to a single character, but to the entire philosophy of a film. If you want to see what a best actor looks like, look at Benicio del Toro's previous films, and then see TRAFFIC. Not a trace of his previous characters are there. You don't see Benicio, you see a hard-boiled Mexican cop. Well, what I see in CAST AWAY isn't a castaway FedEx guy, it's Tom Hanks, momentarily with a really long beard. To me, such a performance shouldn't make the cut for Oscar nominations. Then again, the Academy is always making ridiculous decisions.
Maybe I'm missing something spectacular here. Besides the scenery, I mean. Send in your emails and talkbacks and tell me what I've overlooked.
There's a love story here too, which I believed, but not in a wonderful movie sort of way, rather, in a boring, plain person sort of way. The course that the love story took, I found to be...just what I expected. Even the ending of this film, I found to be fairly typical fare.
Now, I'm not trying to bash this film here. Like I said, I think Tom Hanks did a decent job, as did Helen Hunt, but these roles are in my opinion, not terribly inspired. Tom's character, for instance, works for FedEx, managing logistics, and as such, is time-obsessed and manic. His job takes up too much of his life. I don't know how the writer and filmmakers saw this, but to me, it doesn't make the character likeable or respectable, just a guy with his priorities all screwed up. That's something that I don't think really changes during the course of the film.
I wondered for a while whether such a character type is actually admired by some. I mean, I was once personally punished for my sins by spending an inordinate amount of time up corporate America's ass, having the same sort of tripe spouted at me that Mr. Hanks' character spouts at his workers. I didn't respect the guy, I just thought he was an incompetent asshole hoping we'd make him look good in exchange for an email that said "good job!". Ah well, I can only wonder about such things for so long. This was not the reason I was a little underwhelmed by CAST AWAY.
CAST AWAY is a decent film. I'd say it's worth matinee prices, if such things still exist in your locale. It's not genius. It's not inspired. Just decent. Competent. Now, that's more than most films can say, but I think you should be forewarned against all of the incredibly overzealous reviews you're getting from everywhere else. I've heard time and time again how wonderfully inspired and original this film would be. We hear such things about lots of films. I hope the reason reviewers like this film isn't because they've heard so much positive buzz that they've started believing it.
