# Cast Away (2000)

### reviewed by
Chad Polenz

    Cast Away
    a film review by Chad Polenz

There's been a lot of movies, books and TV shows about people being stranded on a desert island. In most cases the formula is used for comedy or adventure, rarely drama. That's what separates "Cast Away" from all the other stories of the genre, because this is the probably the most realistic depiction of what a human would go through under the circumstances. The result is definitely interesting but not nearly as powerful as it could have been.

This is a movie that's every bit generic as lowbrow action movies and teenage slasher flicks. If you think about it, this is a really easy script to write: man loves wife shown in opening act; man gets on plane and says "I'll be right back;" man's plane crashes into the ocean with man being the only survivor; man ends up on desert island; man must survive - will man ever get back home? And if man does get back home what will have changed?

Yup, that pretty much sums up "Cast Away," the only other details you really need to know is that Tom Hanks stars in the "man" role as Chuck Noland, an employee for Federal Express whose job it is to make sure packages get delivered all over the world on time. Helen Hunt plays the "wife" role, Kelly. There's virtually no other supporting characters, just minor characters plugged in to fill out the story a little.

There's little point in discussing the first act of the film because it works EXACTLY how you'd expect a movie like this to. Hanks is a hard-assed boss who takes his job just a tad too seriously. It's Christmas time and at home he and his wife host a big family gathering and it's implied that the two have a pretty good marriage but it could be a lot better if they weren't so busy. Kelly tries to convince Chuck to take some time off work but he can't, at least not immediately. She even gives him a family heirloom with her picture in it and when Chuck's plane goes down and he escapes to the island it's the only personal possession he retains. Awwww.....

But all sappiness aside, this film still works well as a story of man's basic instinct to survive, to fend off the elements and to overcome loneliness. The Pacific Ocean is a huge, vast place just like outer space and being stuck in the middle of it -hundreds or thousands of miles away from civilization is a very scary situation.

There was a shot in "Titanic" that stands out in my mind as one of the most powerful images I've ever seen. As the ship is sinking in the middle of the night and all hell breaks loose, crew members fire flares in the air hoping another ship will see it and come to their rescue. Then the camera cuts back to about a mile in the air where we see the ocean is as black as oil and that flare is a small speck of light - so tiny it's pathetic. It's a shot that conveys the utter hopelessness and bleakness of the situation, and "Cast Away" is kind of like that idea made into an entire movie.

If you were stuck on a desert island all by yourself would you be able to survive? Would you be willing to become a cro-magnon man, having to kill your food with your bare hands, make your own tools, and build your own shelter just from the things around you? Chuck Noland doesn't have a lot of choice and we watch as his learns how to adapt.

Zemeckis never really gives you clues about what's going to happen next. There's no story at all, just our observations of how this man survives. He's not a Navy SEAL or anything, he's pretty clueless what to do and that gives us a tremendous amount of sympathy for him. When coconuts fall off the trees he knows they can be a source of food but trying to get one open is the tough part. We watch as he throws them against a rock, the bashes it with a smaller rock until the rock in his hand crumbles! He must also learn to make fire without any matches, to make rope out of palms, to eat fish and crabs raw and to maintain his sanity without anyone else to talk to, without anything to read and much of anything remotely recreational to do.

And this is pretty much all that happens for a good 80 or 90 minutes - the bulk of the film. Hanks doesn't have a lot of lines since the only one he can talk to is himself or his "friend" - a volleyball named Wilson. But it's his raw emotions that drive the film. If you were in the same position and didn't know what you were doing wouldn't you make a lot of mistakes? The best moments of the film occur when something bad happens to Chuck. He slashes his hand trying to use a rock as a knife; he nearly impales himself on the coral reef trying to sail out past the breakers; he realizes the area rescuers will have to cover to find both the plane and him add up to a search area of about 500,000 miles.

Realizing this Chuck says, "That's twice the size of Texas," with a look on his face as if he knew all hope was lost. It's a subtle but profound moment, something reminiscent of a Stanley Kubrick device.

How to describe the rest of the film though? If you haven't seen it do you want to know how long he's stuck there for? Do you want to know if he ever tries to get off the island, and if so how? Do you want to know if he'll ever get back home?

Watching this film from a critic's point of view I wasn't so much concerned with whether Chuck would get home or not, I was more interested in the process of him doing so. The film had already done a good job in showing the loneliness of the situation, of the human instinct to survive and the last act just takes both of these ideas one step further. The island in the middle of the ocean is a pretty frightening idea, but being out in the ocean on a raft is even more so. On the island Chuck was at least a cork in the ocean, out of the raft he's just a teardrop (actually, more like teardrop molecule). Thankfully this picture spares us any gratuitous shark attack scenes or huge tidal waves and hurricanes, etc.

It ends how you'd expect it to end - that's neither a good nor bad thing.

So "Cast Away" is a pretty good movie, but it's nothing profound. It does have some originality for a desert island story but the backstory about Chuck's personal life is quite sappy and the ending doesn't have the dramatic bite it's going for. I'm sure there's some way this could have been an all-out excellent film, but what we get is good enough for me.

    GRADE: B

You can also read this review at: http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-4B0B-4B141F28-3A5A4104-prod3 And other reviews on the same topic at: http://www.epinions.com/mvie Check out my profile page at: http://www.epinions.com/user-chad9976

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