My only major beef I had with this movie was the way it was marketed. Thanks to the trailers and previews to the film, we knew that Chuck Noland would in fact be rescued from the island. However, even with that said, the previews didn't really spoil the movie. Though it would have made the message(s) that much more powerful if they didn't give that much of it away. Tom Hanks is Chuck Noland; A FedEx efficiency engineer who flies around the world at a moments notice to troubleshoot whatever problems the company is having at any given place. Helen Hunt plays his loving girlfriend / fiancé, Kelly, who is very understanding of Chuck Noland's plight. One day, just before Christmas, Chuck is called away to Malaysia. This is when Chuck Noland's life takes a sudden and dramatic turn as his plane (most realistically) crashes into the ocean. As the only survivor, he washes up on shore of a small, isolated island in the south Pacific. This is a film that really forces the viewer to relate to the main character. On the surface, Chuck is not a guy most people would relate to; He has a high paying job which he actually seems to enjoy on some level, and a girlfriend he is completely in love with. His life is as good as it can get up until the tragic plane crash. Now his life is turned upside down as he struggles to find the basic needs of survival. There are no cuts to the rescue efforts, no "meanwhile, back in Memphis" scenes. It's all Chuck on the island for the second act of the film. There are four basic needs of survival. Most people know about the first three: Food, Water and Shelter. Chuck realizes that companionship is really the fourth need, which he finds in the form of a vollyball he calls "Wilson". The acquisition of food, water and shelter are all epic struggles for Chuck Noland as we see him try to break open coconuts with rocks and make fire to cook crabs. We suffer with him as he does his own dental work. This goes on for four years... Finally, one day a piece of metal (from the plane?) washes up on the island and it gives Chuck an idea of how to escape. He builds a raft out of Coconut trees and uses the piece of metal as a sail to escape from the island. He spends several days out on the ocean hoping to be rescued. Along the way, he losses his only friend of the last four years, Wilson, in a strange but very emotional scene. Shortly thereafter, on the brink of death from dehydration, he is rescued. In any other movie, this would be the happy ending. But this is not any other movie. Chuck finds that Kelly has moved on with her life. And now he must find a way to move on with his. When he first arrived on the island, he only needed to find ways to physically survive, but now rescued, he needed to find ways how to emotionally survive in a world that moved on without him. The final scene, just before the credits roll, reveals the most powerful moral I have ever seen in a movie. This is a film that proves that no matter how much suffering, pain, or tragedy that someone may go through, their life will always be worth living. And it does so without invoking religion or astrology or any other kind of pseudoscience. This is a moral and spiritual film that all people can relate to in some way or another.
Review of Cast Away
