Watching 'Cast Away' is like watching two and a half hours of
south pacific scenery footage with only Tom Hanks's marvelous
performance to remind me that I was viewing a piece of narrative entertainment..
Hanks’s acting is brilliant which is possibly the only credible part of
the film. 'Cast Away' reunites director Robert Zemeckis (Back To The
Future, What Lies Beneath) and actor Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, Saving
Private Ryan) in their second collaboration since the classic 'Forrest
Gump' (1994).
After a quick view into Chuck Noland (Hanks)'s everyday life as a
Federal Express manager obsessed with time management and Elvis Presley, we
see Chuck biding farewell to his fiancée Kelly Frears, played by Helen
Hunt (Twister, As Good As It Gets) by the FedEx plane on Christmas Eve,
promising he will return before New Year. The plane then crashes and
Chuck conveniently inflates a raft and drifts overnight to a tropical
island. Holding fast to the watch with Kelly’s photo in it as the constant
reminder of home, Chuck begins his four years’ isolation with only a
volleyball as his companion. Chuck eventually escapes the island and
returns home to find life has moved on without him.
In some of the scenes of this movie, I was struck by the feeling of
'paying to see a feature length commercial' on a big screen because the
running hours of 'Cast Away' do not reflect its simplistic plot. The
story could be told in a 45 second television commercial spot, or moreover,
in its trailer. We are unable to escape the FedEx logo or the image
that everyone in the company is in this a big happy, caring family. In
view that Noland’s desperate situation was a result of his employment, it
is hard to imagine anyone in his shoes would still uphold the ethics of
FedEx. But Chuck soon reacts as he should when he decides to open the
washed up parcels
