Castaway

Robert Zemeckis is a very mainstream director - and for once I mean that in a good way. He makes large, cinematic movies, perfect big screen experiences full of easily accessible entertainment. While they are certainly a cut above his many Hollywood peers and even go so far as to display a semblance of intelligence, none actually take any real risks. Zemeckis knows his audience, knows how to push all the right buttons in all the right places so why should he take risks? With Cast Away, he has attempted something that would terrify the majority of A-list directors and for the most part he really has succeeded. Time. Chuck Noland lives his life by it. He is a Federal Express employee whose job is ruled by the clock. One night, a week before Christmas, just as he is on the verge of proposing to his longtime girlfriend, he is called away to acompany a late delivery overseas. "I'll be right back," he tells her and indeed he does return, albeit four years later. His plane crashes into the sea en route and he is washed up on a tiny island, forcing him to eke out some kind of life, alone on this barren outlet. Cast Away opens with a nicely-judged, if slightly rushed chapter. It is a movie about one character and one character alone, the other entities on display make appearances and simply drift away into insignificance. In this film, they really are not important, what is important however is the one person whom the movie's narrative circles, Chuck Noland. The opening is vital in this respect. We need to know Chuck for the man he is before his life-changing "adventure" to give his life as the Cast Away of the title some kind of relevance. Unfortunately, we are granted only the bare essentials. He is a man for whom time means everything, something that will obviously come into play when he is transported to a place where it means nothing. The script does not allow Chuck much time outwith work, therefore lessening the impact on any kind of personal life he may have had. He has a girlfriend and work-mates but they really are only skirted around - the former only briefly glanced upon despite the concept of a wedding proposal - nothing that will gain any significance upon his return. All of this blunts the human drama badly but with what the movie does present us, we can only come to the one conclusion, as stated before, it is a movie about Mr Noland. Cast Away's centre-piece is of course the true highlight. In it, Robert Zemeckis has created a truly immersive environment, bravely allowing - at first anyway - the drama to play out naturally. There is no emotive music, any real drama is formed through believable human behaviour, there is no excessive action. You really do get the feeling that you are there, on this remote, insignificant piece of land as Noland strives to form some semblance of a liveable life. Suddenly, Zemeckis chickens out and speeds the action on four years, thus simplifying the whole experience. We then find a thinner yet still apparently quite healthy Noland. While Zemeckis does a good job avoiding any potential melodrama initially, the sudden leap ahead leaves a really large gap that should have been used to further the drama. The third act is where the film falls apart. Once again, we are faced with a caption indicating the passing of time. We skip past four whole weeks as if the scriptwriters could not be bothered with the most interesting aspect of this hellish journey, that of Noland's return and mental reclimitisation. He is back on his feet, his job means nothing to him and the rather insipid supporting cast also return. The character has changed but there is nothing in his life to change with him. It all feels like such a damp squib, yet the less-than-substantial opening should act as sufficient warning. Acting-wise, Cast Away is Tom Hanks' movie. When we first meet Chuck Noland, he is a driven, slightly unpleasant man, something Hanks' clearly relishes. He plays the role with an intensity rarely equated with his onscreen persona. After the brilliantly filmed, downright terrifying plane crash, Hanks switches his performance up a gear. With next to no dialogue, he commands the screen effortlessly, his doubtless charisma and star power put to a test it passes with flying colours. While the script may be lacking for drama in the final reel, he more than makes up for it, marking Noland's dramatic transformation with pleasing subtlety and nuance. Meanwhile, in support the only actors who have anything to do are Helen Hunt and Nick Searcy. Hunt, a usually watchable if rather plain actress is given an almost non-existent character and suffers badly, turning in a fairly wooden performance. At the end of the day, I left Cast Away feeling cheated. I just could not believe the movie would cop out in such an irritatingly empty-headed way. As the island chapter kicks in, we find a mainstream movie looking to break free from those constrictive bounds but they sadly tighten by the all-too simplistic end. The best thing about Cast Away and also the most consistent is Tom Hanks. He really does deserve at the very least an Oscar nomination for his work here.