Cast Away

by Stephen Farber

Desert island movies can be a chore for the audience trapped for 90 minutes in a single setting with a single protagonist. The makers of Cast Away were clearly aware of the pitfalls, but they haven't in the end surmounted them. While the movie affords Tom Hanks the opportunity to give a tour de force performance, his ordeal is pretty heavy slogging as it drags on for two hours and 20 minutes.

The picture actually begins with a burst of energy as it conveys the hectic pace of the life of a FedEx executive, Hanks' Chuck Noland. The opening sequence in Moscow thrusts us into the electric rhythm of Chuck's existence, which prepares us for the contrast he will have to endure when he finds himself stranded on an island where time is painfully suspended. But first the movie lands him there in a bravura plane crash sequence that will surely traumatize anyone with the slightest fear of flying. The early scenes of Chuck on the island are effective, too, as they dramatize the resourcefulness that allows him to make use of the very meager supplies that he's been handed.

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Unfortunately, the movie's promise gradually dribbles away as William Broyles, Jr.'s screenplay and Robert Zemeckis' direction surrender to bloated self-importance. At first the idea of Chuck's attempt to humanize the volleyball that lands on the island with him is amusing and poignant, but as his relationship with this ball that he names Wilson takes on greater import, the movie edges perilously close to absurdity. Hanks shows his skill in scenes of silent desperation, but his monologues with Wilson fall over into histrionic excess.

The movie finally self-destructs during the protracted final half hour, after Chuck's rescue, when he tries to reconnect with his girlfriend (Helen Hunt). This is the section where Broyles' and Zemeckis' loftier aspirations come into play. They linger over ponderous life lessons about the capriciousness of fate and that old chestnut, the triumph of the human spirit, that aren't really worth listening to. But forget the movie's strained intellectual pretensions. The bottom line is that Cast Away is reaching for so many cosmic truths that it never achieves the emotional kick that any survival story must have.

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