Cast Away

As Cast Away begins we follow the journey of a package from America to Russia. We enter a FedEx depot in Moscow and meet Chuck Noland, a time-obsessed FedEx employee, played by Tom Hanks, who is giving a presentation to a group of Russian employees about how dissatisfied he is with their lack of efficiency. Later we hear him speaking to his girlfriend on the phone, and complaining about having a toothache. Then we see him having dinner with his family before leaving on a trip to Asia from which he promises to be back for New Year’s Eve. All this seems a little forced to me — even if we don’t know anything else about this film, we know that Chuck is going to be marooned on a desert island, because the film is called "Cast Away". So the toothache and the big dinner and the promise all add up to one of the things I hate most about some mainstream films — the carefully set-up scenario that inevitably leads to disaster. Chuck’s girlfriend even gives him an old watch, which we instantly know is either going to be lost or broken.

The very best part of the film takes place on board the plane. When it gets caught in a storm over the Pacific, there’s an explosion and suddenly the plane plummets towards the sea. For several terrifying minutes, we are there with Chuck and the crew, and watch in horror as they are thrown around, injured by large boxes, and finally plunge into the ocean. The great thing about this sequence is that the whole cinema goes down with the plane; we’re right there even as the plane sinks and explodes.

Next comes the obvious part, which many people will find boring. Chuck is washed up on a desert island and becomes a castaway. Hanks plays a man whose life depends on knowing what the time is, and he’s been swept right out of time, with only a broken watch for company. We watch quietly as he tries to remember his emergency survival lessons, and does a remarkable job of staying alive. I couldn’t help remembering the game we’ve all played where we decide what records or other things we would want if we were stranded on a desert island. Watching this film made me realise how unimportant any of those things would be if we couldn’t get fresh water and food, or didn’t know how to protect ourselves from the sun.

I won’t say any more about the story, except that it’s a bit too long, and could have done without all the baloney that happens towards the end of the film. The crash and Hanks’s Robinson Crusoe act is really all that was needed to make this a good film. The rest is just superfluous.