Rating: 
Summary: Castaway escapes Best Movie of the Year
Review: Rare is it that an actor with such talent as Tom Hanks could convincingly portray four different characters in one film with so many realistic and underlying messages. Here, he portrays man who is a workaholic who has very little time for the precious things in life, such as his relationship with his girlfriend. He is a company man who pushes aside many things to get his job done. Once shipwrecked, he becomes the learner and survivor, who now is educating himself about himself and the environment. He experiences loss of human contact, friendship, loved ones, and his own failures. As the years pass, he now plays a survivor, who has mastered each day, and creates his own world of friendship. Upon his return to civilization, his final portrayal is that of all three people, and the addition of a fourth, who now must deal with loss of love, time, and the inevitable reality of being directionless with many directions to embark upon. This is such a parallel artform to many individuals each day who suffer such trials of loss, be it in divorce, death, or employment. Each moral of this wonderful story applies to our lives. Hanks outdoes himself as an actor, idealist, and a human being.
Rating: 
Summary: On the right lines but ultimately......
Review: Castaway is fairly well done. It is very difficult to make a film where a guy is alone for most of it and keep it interesting. However the problem with this film is that its tactics to make it interesting are a bit too obvious.The film has a good plot, and is for the most part well acted. Tom Hanks does handle a difficult role with relative ease. The problem is parts of the script. In order to prevent the film from getting boring, Hanks goes psycho whilst on the island. Fair enough, its pretty feasible: being alone on an island like that would affect you that way. But the mistake of the writers was creating this ball and his relationship with it in such an obvious way. It was plain that they had done this simply to keep dialogue going. Having said this, Hanks does it fairly convincingly. But there's only so much you can do with that kind of script. The film does use emotion well and generally leaves you with a good impression. But the island stretch is overblown.
Rating: 
Summary: Beware of the Winking Whale!
Review: I thought this movie was pretty good. Honestly, nothing spectacular. Yet when I think about the scenes I tend to remember them all fondly. Except one. I was really enjoying the movie and just about to put it on my "buy the DVD" list when the whale winked at Chuck during his escape. I couldn't believe they put that in there. I can't imagine Tom Hanks screneing the film and saying "looks great, winking whale and all." Everything else ranged from great to highly entertaining. I will probably buy the DVD regardless of the WINKING WHALE...AAAAGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!
Rating:
Summary: The Middle and the End
Review: Everyone who has seen the trailer, I suppose, knows that he makes it back at the end of the film -- which many viewers didn't like. I would offer an observation that not many have mentioned. There are two scenes in the movie in which Hanks' character looks in each of the cardinal directions. The first of these occurs at the top of the island: he looks north, south, east, and west... seeing nothing except water. He is alone on the island, and there is no solace. The second of the two occurs near the end of the film at the crossroads: he looks again in each direction and sees nothing but land. Loneliness in all but one direction, and that is the direction he settles on. I don't think this was thrown in as the Hollywood crowd-pleaser... this ending had some depth.
Rating:
Summary: Most people don't get it
Review: When I went to see this movie in the theater I was expecting "Robinson Crusoe" and I was disappointed. I think I got that idea from the TV commercials. It wasn't until the end of the movie that I realized I had missed the point. So many people miss the point of this movie. Even those who end up liking it don't get it. I'll give you a hint. It's called Cast Away not because Hanks' character is marooned on an island but because he is cast away by his fiancee. When you realize that you can fully appreciate the movie. I'm glad to see that at least one other person knows the truth (See: Extraordinary by Dr. Christopher Coleman). Once you know this truth then the whole movie opens up to you. The four year marooning is an interlude that trys to distract you from the real meat of the movie. It tries to put you in Noland's shoes and get you to think about surviving. Soon you forget about Helen Hunt's character. Then when Noland returns you realize that he has been gone for four years. She thought he was dead. Now that she has moved on what does it mean for the two of them? That is the moment in the movie to which everything else is made to support.
Rating: 
Summary: Strong beginning-- What the hell happened after that?
Review: I have always been a big fan of Tom Hanks because it seems he reads the scripts presented to him before accepting roles. In this movie, it appears Tom only read the first 80 pages or so then signed on the dotted line. This movie had so much potential to be a modern version of Aldous Huxley's "Brave New World" as Hanks' character left civilization and became the savage that had to adjust to normal society. In its roots, Castaway achieves the "savage" element of "Brave, New World" in the first hour. And what a first hour it is. We celebrate when Hanks' character discovers fire and wince when he injures himself. It is in his struggle that we can appreciate his battle to survive against the elements. After that first hour, however, it seems Castaway loses sight of its original goal. Hanks' character seems to have no problem adjusting to life and then the movie ends. I think Castaway could have been a lot better.
Rating:
Summary: The longest infomercial ever
Review: I like Tom Hanks and I had great hopes for this movie, but found it a terrible disappointment. It was dull and uneventful. At one point during one of Tom's monologues I expected a caption to run across the bottom of the screen stating "for Oscar consideration". I was so bored I found myself tempted to count the times I saw the words FedEx in the background. I know that this opinion is an unpopular one but I take solace in the fact that the friend I saw it with felt the same.
Rating:
Summary: What would you do...
Review: ...if you were trapped on an island for 4 years? Hanks does a magnificent job of portraying hopelessness and the longing that kept the character alive and eventually brought him back to civilization. There have been several comments on the "drawn out" scenes in this movie and I have to believe that it is our societies obsession with special effects and action that have allowed this movie to slip through the cracks as one of the better movies ever made. The most compelling parts of the movie were dealing with the character's drive to survive on the island. The fact that Zemekis spent so much of the movie on the island was ingenious! What kind of movie would this have been if 4 years on an island converted to only 30 minutes of screen time? The time spent on the island gave the movie a feeling of authenticity. The real wonder is how the movie keeps you entertained when silence is such a large portion of the movie. It's in these times that we truely connect with the everyday man that Hank's is so brilliantly portraying. This movie is like nothing I've seen before and ranks as one of my favorites of all time! FINALLY A REALISTIC ENDING- INSTEAD OF THE HOLLYWOOD ENDING!!!
Rating: 
Summary: CAST AWAY YOUR FAT ON DESERT ISLAND DIET
Review: Tom Hanks loses 40 odd pounds a deserted South Pacific island. That's about it for plot in this beautiful but ordinary adventure nicely directed by Robert Zemeckis. What one expects from the intentional double meaning two-word title is that our hero experience some kind of spiritual enlightenment from the enforced "casting away" of civilization's ephemera. But that is not the case here. It's not giving anything away here to say that during his absence he has been declared dead and his fiancee Helen Hunt has married. But since we've recently seen Hunt cavorting on screen with Mel Gibson, Jack Nicholson, Richard Gere and Kevin Spacey among others (apparently while Hanks was island-bound), it should come as no surprise. The two-disc set includes enthusiastic commentary from Zemeckis, a startling featurette on the remarkable and wonderfully invisible digital effects and much more. 143 minutes, PG-13.
Rating:
Summary: Extraordinary
Review: I went to see Cast Away with some trepidation. Although I enjoy Tom Hanks' acting, I wasn't at all sure that he could carry the movie given what I'd heard about it, and his promotional appearances and interviews didn't quell my misgivings. But I'm pleased to report that I was totally won over. Quite simply, this is Hollywood at its best. Although it dips rather expectedly into a bit of the sentimentality of Forest Gump in the final few minutes, all involved can be forgiven on the strength of the rest of the film. That Hanks lost the Oscar for best actor to Russell Crowe of Gladiator is only proof that the Oscars are devoid of whatever artistic integrity they might once have had. Hanks, in his role as Chuck Noland, is superb in this film. I was surprised that critics and reviewers haven't made more of what I saw to be the real core of the film--the drama of Noland's return. While watching Noland (the name can't be coincidental!) surviving through ingenuity on his island was fascinating, the story's emotional heart is played out upon his return, when he finds out he's been cast away by his fiancee. The depiction of the deeply conflicted couple trapped in a horrible situation between love and responsibility was completely convincing. Most highly recommended.
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