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Summary: The best bits gone
Review: Hanks - great. Special effects and cinematography - great. But the two things that I want to see in this movie were card titles: 4 years later and 3 weeks later. I wanted to watch Hanks evolve on that island, not jump ahead. And Lord how I wanted to see those first 3 weeks off the island!!!
Ultimately entertaining, but not as though provoking as it could be. DVD is noteworthy for the extras - and for finding out the script went through 150 rewrites!
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Summary: The Best FedEx Commercial Ever!
Review: This movie was nothing but a commercial for Federal Express! End of story.
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Summary: Primal
Review: Cast Away is an entertaining movie about an extremely punctual man who gets stranded on an island. The move has some really great moments. It is great to see how Tom Hanks must adapt to his environment. This is no tropical paradise, but more of a tip of a mountain sticking out of the ocean. The only complaint about the film is the length. The first section could have been shorter, more island scenes, and drastically cut out the end. I just want a good survival movie, so the character builing story of the him and the girl does not appeal too me. This is an entertaining movie.
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Summary: OK but a little long!
Review: This film could have been a lot shorter and than I would have liked it more. As usual Tom Hanks is great and does an excellent perfomance once he lands on the island. However, there are a few flaws in this movie that could have been approached differently. For example the scene at the end of the movie was a little to weird for me and not very credible. On the overall scale it does make one appreciate every moment of life as we never know what tomorrow will bring. Unlike "The Blue Lagoon" filmed years ago this protrays man in a truer sense of abandonment on an Island all alone with no one to talk to. It makes you wonder how he was motivated to get up every morning.
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Summary: The special features aren't really that special.
Review: The special Making of and other video features are boring and don't really contribute to the experience of the movie.The content of the movie is fabulous.
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Summary: Everyone is cast away sometime
Review: Cast Away is not only great entertainment, it's a movie that leaves the viewer feeling better able to cope with his/her own difficulties after seeing it. It does this without showing superhuman effort by a superhuman man.
It show instead the superhuman efforts done by an ordinary man. Chuck Nolan, an international manager for Federal Express, is a nice-looking middle-manager who is middle-aged and going soft in the middle as he moves into his middle 40s.
Nothing about him stands out except that he is a hard worker, and well-thought-of in Fed Ex circles. If he has one great talent, it is his life-long ability to manage his time and get the job done. His life is not all about business, however.
The love of his life is graduate student Helen Hunt. He has friends, family, and the acclaim of his colleagues, yet he is somewhat disconnected from it all. For example, he finds it easier to recommend a good cancer specialist to a friend whose wife is dying rather than express his own sympathies.
He wants to propose to his girlfriend at Christmas, but instead accepts a last-minute Fed Ex assignment that interrupts a Christmas Eve dinner and takes him away from her. Of course, that fateful decision ultimately sends his world into a tailspin - and the Pacific Ocean. He washes up on what some might see as an idyllic island. As he faces a number of hideous trials and plots, we become thoroughly connected to this displaced person. We root for him, for his survival against overwhelming lonliness and depression and hardship.
We realize that Chuck Nolan's struggle is one that happens to all of us, in countless ways when we somehow become disconnected from what really matters in life.
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Summary: Engrossing story with good psychological depth
Review: The theme of the cast away goes back long before Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) or The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss (1781-1830); indeed it probably goes back to a time when people first set out on the open sea in boats. It is a wonderfully romantic genre, employing the classic "man versus nature" theme while allowing us to indulge in the fantasy of escape from the confines and restrictions of civilization. Here we have Tom Hanks as Chuck Nolan, a Fed Ex executive whose plane ditches into the South Pacific ocean. He washes up on a tiny, desert island as the sole survivor of the plane crash. (Incidentally, both "des-ert island" and "de-serted island" are correct, the words "des-ert' and "de-serted" in this context meaning the same thing.) His four-year stay on the island forms the bulk of the movie, but perhaps the most engaging part for most movie-goers is what happens afterwards. Tom Hanks was excellent throughout, as usual, and the direction by Robert Zemeckis from a script by William Broyles Jr. was compelling. Especially good was the irony about what happens to Chuck's beloved (Helen Hunt) while he is gone. This has been done before (but I forget where), and is the kind of heart-wrenching development that could have been pure saccharin but instead came across as thought-provoking, veracious and very affecting. Zemeckis also directed the excellent film, Contact (1997), made from the novel by Carl Sagan. We can see here (and there) that Zemeckis's work owes a lot to the influence of Steven Spielberg in both a positive and a negative sense. Zemeckis, like Spielberg, can be cloying at times in his effort to secure the audience's identification. We can see this in the beginning with Chuck cutely trying to sell efficiency to the Russians with the help of a little boy. But splendid was the plane crash sequence, the kind of thing Spielberg would want to be intensely vivid, and it was. And later the startling sight of the huge cargo ship, like a sea-going skyscraper, recalled to mind the first shot of the spaceship from Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). The Fed Ex packages flying out all over the world engendering a kind of corporate "we're all one world" feeling like something from a Coca-Cola commercial was pure Spielberg. But what I like to do when I look at a movie like this is to lean forward and scrutinize it for authenticity. Did the cast away lose weight? Yes, as a matter of fact, Tom Hanks must have dropped about ten pounds, or perhaps he fattened up for the first part of the film (or was that body cosmetology?) and then fasted for the scenes showing him four years later. But did he lose enough weight? For those who have been watching TV's "Survivor," we know he didn't. And was he tan enough? His hair was little lighter after his ordeal, but he really needed to be baked a dark brown, which he wasn't. I also look at how he ate. What was his source of vitamin C? Do coconuts contain Vitamin C? I don't know. But showing him eating seaweed, which does contain vitamin C, would have worked. Using the coconuts to hold water was a nice touch. Learning to spear fish with a wooden spear is plausible, but spearing a fish with a wooden spear in the open ocean is unlikely. Notice there were no birds or bird eggs or bird guano on the island. An uninhabited island in the middle of the ocean is always a nesting place for birds. This last observation reveals that the setting was not in fact a tiny island but part of a larger body of land. Notice there was no clear, encircling shot of the island (as from the air). In fact we never see the other side of the island. It was interesting to see how he got the fire going (again "Survivor" fans--and boy scouts--know how hard that is to do), but I was thinking that maybe he could have used the glass on the watch face or from the flashlight as a way to concentrate sunlight to make a fire. I also watched to see whether he did what I would have done. Of course what I would have done doesn't mean that much, but I would not have left the island for the open ocean (which seemed almost suicidal), unless there was out there on that ocean a ship's corridor, so to speak, which is possible. Of course, who can say what a man might do after being four years entirely alone on a tiny island? I also would not have tried to cure my toothache, regardless of how bad it hurt, by breaking the tooth off with the ice skates. After all, that might make things worse. Trying to pull the tooth would have been my strategy--but how? I liked the irony of finding the ice skates in a washed up Fed Ex package, and then Chuck's use of the blades as mirror and knife. I know why he didn't take the dead man's clothes, but I think he should have plugged his nose and peeled them off anyway. The washed up metal "sail" was a nice inspiration, and there were many others: the "discovery" of tool-making by striking the vocanic rock at the right angle; burning the base of the trees to make wood for the raft; the petroglyphs he made in the cave; sleeping on the floor in the hotel room, etc. Best no comment scene: Chuck looking at the Alaskan king crab legs at the buffet.
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Summary: Stranded on an island and not getting any... reading done?
Review: Although the thought of spending some time on a secluded island with warm sand and palm trees may seem appealing as the ideal vacation option, we neglect to qualify such a visit with necessities for human comfort: Ritz Carlton, gourmet food and a swimming pool with swim-up bar and blondes as far as the eye can see. A high-energy and dedicated Federal Express employee, played by Tom Hanks is aboard a company plane when the aircraft and its crew crashes into the ocean during a fierce storm. Only one person survives. With nothing more than common sense and a will to survive, this castaway spends his time with no human or animal company. We get an occasional glimpse into the lonely existence of an island castaway. While all of this makes for a somewhat heart-warming story, I couldn't help but be mortified with the thought of being stranded on a deserted island with no books to read. Now THAT would be horrendous!
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Summary: Deeper movie than it appears - look closely
Review: Well, people go back and forth with negative to positive in their opinions of Cast Away - as probably with most movies - but I will actually go out on a limb and state that I cannot fathom why anyone in their right mind would not like (or love for that matter) this movie!! I always enjoy Tom Hanks but that is beside the point with this gem. The key is to place yourself as best as possible with Tom's character Chuck Noland. I feel that his execution of emotions and reactions to his situation are exactly what you would expect to go through. He is shocked, then confused, then lonely, then desperate, then content - and so on. I came away from this movie with a much higher appreciation for life itself. I appreciate the people and things I have in my life. If you take the time to immerse yourself, just once, into this movie I am positive you will come away with at least a tinge of appreciation for some aspect of your life. Gush gush - ya maybe - but sit back for about 15 minutes (or more if needed) and imagine yourself on an island all alone - for 4 years - you might find inspiration from Chuck and gratitude for such a fine movie having been produced. Never boring and contains an ending that leaves your imagination wide open for possibilities, watch Cast Away now (then when it's over watch it again) And give your volleyball a hug when you have a chance....
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Summary: CASTAWAY
Review: This is one of those movies where you can watch it over and over again, and everytime you will learn a little something different.
Tom Hanks was brilliant, i couldn,t see any one else really playing that part.
It is just a very interesting movie, i have now watched it twice since owning it. Which has only been like two weeks and i can still watch it without getting bored with it.
Excellant movie.
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