Review of Cast Away

Cast Away (2000)
2/10
A Very Long FedEx Commercial (spoilers ahead)
19 June 2001
Warning: Spoilers
I gave this movie a "2" only because Tom Hanks is superb. Otherwise, this film has no redeeming features as far as I'm concerned. It's one big yawn, and poorly written to boot.

One of the pivotal things that enables our hero to survive is that packages wash up with items he's able to use. Yet he deliberately leaves one package unopened and at the end delivers it. Aw, c'mon! We're talking life-and-death here! In the end he delivers the package to it's proper destination -- 'cuz that's what FedEx is all about, I guess.

The movie crawls along showing Hanks' adjustment to the island. Some time passes -- we see he's started a beard, but his hair hasn't grown too much -- maybe two weeks? Then, bam! four years have passed. Now the first thing that crossed my mind when it was announced that he'd been there four years was, "Why hasn't he committed suicide?" Well, it crossed his mind, too and we hear him tell about it -- twice. But we don't see it! This crucial scene occurs off-camera! Bad story-telling. I'm not saying that we needed scenes of every day on the island, but some showing his adjustment and time passing would have been appropriate and made a smoother transition into the escape sequence.
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