Tom Hanks in "Cast Away."

MOVIE INFORMATION

With 10 as a must-see, Jack gives this film a: Stars: Tom Hanks Director: Robert Zemeckis Rated: PG-13, with profanity and crash violence Length: 143 minutes

ROCHESTERCRITIQUE

Having seen this film, how would you rate it? 10 5 9 4 8 3 7 2 6 1

By Jack Garner
Democrat and Chronicle

(December 22, 2000) -- Four years marooned on a empty South Pacific island gives you more than sand in your shoes and takes away more than inches off your waistline.

It realigns your priorities.

You don't put much importance on a job deadline or your chances for advancement or amassing the most toys when you're not sure how you'll get your next drink of water.

The important things in life are different when you're lonely enough to talk to a vollyball.

In ways both simple and profound, Cast Away reminds us to pay attention to what really matters in our lives. And it conveys its message through an entertaining and engrossing story that's both familiar and highly original.

The key to the film's undeniable allure is another masterful performance from Tom Hanks. As the marooned Chuck Noland, Hanks delivers a solo tour-de-force.

For more than half the film's two-hours-plus running time, Hanks' character is alone on the island, engaging us with his character's resourcefulness, his frustrations and fears, and a broad and affecting range of emotions.

All the while, director Robert Zemeckis offers his star no place to hide.

Through the extensive island scenes, you'll hear no soundtrack music or off-screen narration, and you see no flashbacks or visions of the lives of the people Noland left behind.

It's Hanks, and nothing but Hanks, as he adds to the mounting evidence that he's today's greatest actor as Everyman.

In this case, the changes in his character are as obvious as the lost weight and added muscle, and as subtle as the loss of energy in body movement, and even the sparkle that seems to have left his eye after four years alone.

Cast Away was developed from Hanks' own idea by screenwriter William Broyles Jr., who cleverly made Chuck Noland a FedEx executive. Thus, the character is a master of time management and in a profession that's all about connecting with people the world over.

Soon enough, he barely knows what day it is, let alone the time of day. And he becomes as unconnected as any person can become.

As the film opens, Noland is in Moscow's Red Square, teaching new Russian employees the importances of racing the clock in their work. Then he's home in Memphis, spending a few holiday moments with his lovely and understanding lover, Kelly (Helen Hunt).

But then duty calls, and Noland is off on another trans-ocean FedEx flight. This time, a storm strikes, the plane crashes (in a spectacular, stomach-churning sequence) and Noland eventually washes up, barely alive, on a tiny unchartered island.

Thus begins Noland's four-year odyssey of painful self-discovery.

But, to Cast Away's credit, the film doesn't end with Noland's return to civilization. He learns, painfully, that time did not stand still during his long exile.

Zemeckis, who previously teamed with Hanks for the Oscar-winning Forrest Gump, directs Cast Away with skill, restraint and intelligence, as he carefully marries film technique to Noland's state in life.

The opening sequences are shot and edited with speed and movement, strongly displaying the hurly-burly of modern life. The plane crash is sudden, jarring and horrific.

The depiction of island solitude, though, is daringly stark and static, and the film's final sequences, back home, are filmed with confident, steady maturity.

Cast Away arrives in the busy holiday season, preceded by questions: Is there contemporary meaning in the story of a latter-day Robinson Crusoe? Can Hanks score another hit? Will Cast Away survive in the wake of TV's Survivor?

But such questions grow trivial and are quickly forgotten in the engrossing grip of this first-rate film.