Is there significance in the title being 2 words? Chuck Nolan (Tom Hanks) is a 'castaway' just like Gilligan was. But he has also been forced to cast away his life styles and most of the things he thought were important to him. By the time the film is over, he has cast away everything and is a completely different person.

In most good films or novels, we enjoy seeing a person with serious character flaws, learn why his or her life has been misspent. We like seeing the character develop into a greater person, a better person, by surviving some ordeal. It's great to believe that the worst of us can change for the better. And that's what's wrong with this movie. Chuck has no 'serious' character flaws and his personnel growth is limited. Plus the ordeal doesn't really justify the ways he grows.

Chuck Nolan is a compulsive workaholic who, due to the nature of his job, is both obsessed by and ruled by time. He thinks that by beating the clock, he has some control over his life. In reality, the clock is dictating to him what he can and can not do.

A telling early scene has Chuck and his girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt) comparing their personnel planners to schedule time together for the Holiday's. He is traveling to Malaysia and she insists that he be home for New Years Eve. It's never explain why New Years Eve is such a big deal but we kind of know in advance he isn't going to make it.

His airplane crashes in the middle of the ocean in what I must say are some spectacular special effects. A few scenes here stretch credulity, such as how long a jet engine can continue to run after hitting the ocean and being separated from the rest of the plane, including the fuel tanks. But it's one of those scenes where time becomes distorted. Slow motion and replays from different perspectives make a short event seam long. And the effects are so overwhelming at this point that you won't think about the implausibilities until later.

Sole survivor, Chuck, finds himself stranded on a small tropical island. Though he is heralded as a very determined, level headed and resourceful executive at FedEx, he immediately becomes a confused and illogical castaway. A resourceful man would have opened the dozen or so FedEx packages that he found right away in search of survival tools. His use of the life raft to protect the packages while he sat out in the rain showed no grasp of reality. I find it hard to believe he could have climbed the corporate ladder when he walks around with blinders on.

He once "borrowed" a kid's bike to make a delivery when his truck broke down. And we see him quickly and efficiently organize a team of workers to get packages off of a 'stuck' delivery van onto 2 other vans to keep the packages moving. His conversation with a coworker, where he explained he could have 'worked around' a problem but chose not to set a bad precedent, showed him to be an intelligent and forward thinking executive. Yet on the island, he can't seem to analyze his own situation. He has lost his ability to plan and organize. He is there a week before he even tries to make a fire, and he discovers water sources by accident rather than looking for them the first day. The time obsessed executive even waits 4 years before deciding to build a boat! He has changed, without explanation, from Bill Gates, to Gilligan.

Of course he gets better. Toward the end there is scene where he has fashioned his old life raft to collect rainwater. But during the first few weeks he relies on coconut milk and water collected on leaves. His ineptitude could have made this a great comedy, if it weren't so inconsistent with his earlier personality.

Then comes the rescue. His return predictably finds everything changed. He can't go back to his old life. It isn't there to go back to. And in way too little screen time, we explore all of his mixed emotions and his rationalizations. We are shown he is a better person now, more caring of others, more appreciative of little things, etc.

This is the most unsatisfying part. We've seen 20 minutes of Chuck trying to start a fire. Now we get 10 minutes of him talking to the now married Kelly and making important, life long decisions! The new Chuck analyses the situation, rationalizes the changes, accepts the heart rendering facts (without displaying much heart rendering!), and decides on a new life course, all in less time than it took him to open his first coconut.

Tom Hanks is a good actor and does well here in most scenes but the writing leaves him little to work with. Helen Hunt, who is one of my favorites, seemed out of place here. She didn't look or act like someone about to present her doctoral thesis. And she got too little screen time to develop a believable character. And since most of the film takes place on a deserted island, no other character gets any real development.

Which brings me to Wilson, the volleyball. This was a nice touch and gave the director a chance to help us understand Chuck's feelings and thought processes by having him vocalize his thoughts to Wilson. However, the writer, director or both, missed this opportunity. The few conversations Chuck has with Wilson are mostly unrevealing. For example, Chuck makes a big deal over ice on his return with no real explanation why. Sure he was on an island, but he also had to do without insect repellant and toilet paper. He makes no such big deal over those items. But, what if he had lamented to Wilson constantly over how he could stand the coconut milk a lot better if it was cold? One or 2 lines like that and the changes he went through at the end would have been clearer and more satisfying to the viewer. Alas, even Wilson's character suffers from under-development.

Throughout the film, the writing and direction is uneven and too many assumptions are made. Let's make a big deal over ice, though it was never mentioned before. But let's NOT explain at the end whether quits his job or is just on leave. Use a subtle nod to show which path he chooses, but never explain how the one UN-opened package saved his life. It could have inspired him or gave him purpose, but no words or actions on the island indicate that. Besides, it IS made quite clear that Kelly was his inspiration. I think it would have been more dramatic to actually show 'the test' rather than just allude to it a year after the fact. You could have skipped ALL the toothache scenes to regain the time. Then again, the dentist's name was probably the best (and only funny) line in the movie!

Other reviewers have called this a big FedEx commercial. But since the moral of the story, though poorly delivered, seems to be that time obsession is a BAD thing and making time for relationships is a GOOD thing, I can't see why FedEx even agreed to be part of this. FedEx exists because of the BAD people in this story!

So in the end an inconsistent man goes through an ordeal that causes inconsistent and relatively small changes in him. He isn't disliked in the beginning, so his growth is subtle and unsatisfying. What's so great about a guy going from being a decent guy with a few annoyances, to a decent guy with fewer annoyances? I guess, if you really HATE pagers, you may get some gratification from his personal development. To me it was an awful small amount of improvement for his 4 plus year ordeal; and an awful small amount of enjoyment for my 143 minutes of viewing time.

A quick note about the DVD version: The movie is on one disk and there is a second disk filled with special "behind the scenes" and "making of" stuff. It's quite possible that the 'Extras' disk is more entertaining than the 'Feature' disk!


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV