CAST AWAY
Review: This is about Chuck Noland, he is a Fed Ex executive and devotes most of his life to his job. His girlfriend Kelly is often neglected but on Christmas Eve he proposes to her just before embarking on a large assignment. On the assignment a plane crash strands him on a remote island. He finds a volleyball on the island and befriends it and calls it Wilson. He now must transform himself physically and emotionally to survive.
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Actors: Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt and Paul Sanchez
Year: 2000
Genre: Adventure and Drama
Conclusion: 4/5
I can’t think of a better actor who could have carried this part off. This is the second time that Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks have worked together. The time before this was on the film Forrest Gump (1994). This is a very long film (well over 2 hours). There were actual lines of dialogue written for Wilson the Volleyball. This was to help Tom Hanks have a more natural interaction with the inanimate object. One of the three volleyballs used in the film was sold in an auction for $18,400. Almost 15 years after the film’s release, Tom Hanks jokingly “reunited” with Wilson the volleyball at a New York Rangers hockey game. The themes that are very much in evidence in this film are loneliness and our need for relationship and also wilderness/journey. This equals the loss of oneself in the wilderness and the journey to get back home again. At the Golden Globe Awards in 2001 it won for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama (Tom Hanks). One film critic wrote “Tom Hanks’ powerful, brutal and mature story”.
