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Cast Away (Single Disc Edition) Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 90 Reviews)

I forgt how powerful this film really was...
I watched this film again in anticipation of Hanks in The DaVinci Code. And I was amazed at how much I reacted this movie after 2 years. Unlike others, I don't like to give away the film. Details can sometimes make it so the film doesn't need to be seen. I prefer to express the emotion in this movie.

At the time this film was released, everyone compared it to Hanks performance in Forest Gump. And I did also. But now, after watching it again, I see the similarities and the differences.

Gump was a series of vignettes. A `slower' person haphazardly thrown into historical situations. Castaway, in a quick capsulation, is the end of a man's life due to being stranded on an uncharted island after a plane crash, the loss of the love of his life, and in the final minutes, realizing he has a whole new life to begin. A life with more possibilties than his previous one.

Chuck Noland of FedEx, unknowing leaves his life behind when he boards a a plane. The plane goes down and he survives on an island well out of the shipping lanes and travelled waters. The fact that he survives is a miracle. Hanks is superb in the transformation of personalities that surface. At first, he is the civilized clot who has no idea what to do. Then he realizes the hopelessness of his situation (punctuated by a panaramic view of his tiny island from a summit), and succumbs to this hopelessness of his situation with a suicide attempt. When the attempt fails, he accepts his doom as lost soul. Until he is able to create fire. And then, he assumes the role of a survivor. The key is a Volleyball (whom he dubs Wilson due to it's maker) marked by his own bloodly hand. This connection of blood, creates the alterego Hanks imprints upon Wilson. While it appears he is going insane, this is the key to his surviving, as well as his love for his fiance, played by Helen Hunt. His transformation from dweeb to survivor (the scenes with his impacted tooth are wrenching), are a parellel to real life, telling the viewer to never give up, no matter what the odds.

It is the ending, after his rescue, that truly affected me. The realization of both he and Hunt, that their lives had moved on, was at the least, powerfully emotional.

While this film recieved mixed reviews when it came out, it has to be viewed again. In today's atmosphere, with the horrors of the world, this movie is about the individual, and not the world.

Great.
How do you write, direct, act, and put out a full length movie focused on one man stranded on an island that is not only tolerable but entertaining? You have Robert Zemeckis, William Broyles Jr., and Tom Hanks create Cast Away. Emotional, insightful, a very good movie.

The ultimate challange for a great actor!
This is one of the best films of loss, personal journey and redemption I've ever seen!

Tom Hanks clearly deserved the Oscar for best actor of 2000 that year. Faced with the challange of having to act through most of the movie with only himself, a volleyball and the brutalities of nature, he pulled it off miraculously.

From the moment he is stranded on that deserted island, you're there with him, feeling every pain and every frustration he feels. You feel every joy and every sense of excitement when he finally cracks that coconut open and when he finally creates a roaring fire. How good that cooked crab must taste!

When Hanks develops his personal relationship with his volleyball, Wilson, suspension of disbelief is not necessary. You buy all of it, because you only need to image for a moment the madness and the yearning to talk to someone (or something) one must have to endure to survive on an island for four years.

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