R E V I E W S

Cast Away (2000)

Starring: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Nick Searcy, Christopher Noth
Director: Robert Zemeckies
Rating: PG-13

Studio: DreamWorks SKG

Review Posted: 1.2.01

Rating: 3.5/4

By Dan Peters.

"A survivor four years in the making"

This isn't the first time that Robert Zemeckies and Tom Hanks have teamed up. They were together in 1994 with the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump. And now they're back together in Cast Away.

Tom Hanks plays Chuck Noland, a FedEx guy who goes from place to place troubleshooting problems and making sure that the packages arrive on time. He'll do anything to do this, even steal a little kid's bicycle. But now, he is enjoying Christmas dinner with his wife Kelly (Helen Hunt) until the phone rings for him. He is needed in Malaysia. And soon after that, he's on an airplane traveling through a storm.

And then the plane crashes (this crash is one of the most brilliantly constructed plane crashes I have ever witnessed in film). The crash kills everyone on board except for Chuck. And the next morning, his floating raft takes him to an island. There is no way he can contact someone so he has to learn how to survive on the island.

Tom Hanks has 80% of the screen time here and takes full advantage of it by showing his acting capability. We start to know this character better as each minute passes by. Also, Tom Hanks had to lose a lot of weight for this movie and grow a beard. If I were the academy, I'd at least nominate him as best actor.

You may be thinking that a man stranded on an island sounds boring but this isn't the case here. The movie never gets dull or boring. It always manages to be entertaining. Part of this might come from the humor in the movie. I
was highly surprised how much humor this movie had, and a lot of it was very funny.

So what's the main reason why Cast Away is not getting four stars? The ending. *SPOILER AHEAD* It never clearly explains what's going to happen to Chuck after he finds out his wife is married to another man. I wanted more of an explanation. *END OF SPOILER*

I was really hoping that Robert Zemeckis would make a great movie out of Cast Away after the terrible What Lies Beneath. My Christmas wish came true. Overall, this is one of the best films of the year. It'll have your eyes glued to the screen until the credits start rolling. Cast Away is a movie you must not pass up.

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