User Reviews

I liked this movie, but I can't say the same for the reviews found on this website. Far too many of these fall into 2 categories: Those who thought the movie was a Crusoe-like story of survival and loved it, and those who thought the film was an ad for Fedex and hated it. But the movie is neither about "man against nature" nor about Fedex.

Cast Away is about love - about the difficulty of finding it in a world obsessed with success, about the freakish accidents that can produce or destroy it, about an ordeal that led one man to re-think what is meaningful in life, and about the need to bring to the pursuit of love the same resourcefulness and courage that enabled the hero to survive on an island for 5 years.

Tom Hanks is superb as Chuck Noland - creating immense sympathy for an ordinary guy trapped - not against his will - in a job that is eating him alive. How many actors could have made Noland's attachment to "Wilson" believable? Yet Hanks does.

The last section of the film, much reviled by many, is immensely touching. Noland has survived 5 year's of utter isolation hoping to be reunited with his fiancé and has resigned himself to death at least a few times before he is miraculously rescued. Anyone who remains dry-eyed during his meeting with Kelly, when their rich feelings are both acknowledged and of necessity abandoned - is unworthy of being allowed in the theater to see a film of such quality as this one.

That Noland's hard-earned wisdom about love and family will not be wasted makes for a marvelous ending to the film. It has required all of his ingenuity and endurance to survive on the island. It will now require strength of a different kind to accept the irrevocable loss of Kelly and open himself to a new experience, perhaps with Bettina. The last scene, with Noland standing at the crossroads, as the haunting theme is reprised for the last time, as Bettina drives toward her house and as Hanks looks into the camera with new-found resolve - is classic - though again, cynics are absolutely barred from enjoying it.

From time to time a group of people with a lot of guts come forward and challenge something, that every average thinking producer would get nightmares to even think about making it.

Fear of failing must come to mind, if the setting says:

• only one actor for 80 min (and one dead body)

• 40 min of it basically limited to: "Hello,.. What's that?.. Albert Miller,.. Over here,.."

• no BGM

• no adrenaline injections with savages, sharks, snakes etc.

• just plain "Life is hard enough as it is."

I loved it for:

• the guts of making it

• the heartbreaking and real-to-life love story

• Tom Hanks' performance

• his companion Wilson

great movie / must see

Tom Hanks movie career has been one of the best things to emerge out of television acting in the last half century. He rarely if ever disappoints. CAST AWAY is one of his best performances - a tour-de-force one man show for most of the movies time on screen.

Hanks is Chuck Nolan, an executive official at FED EX, who seems to have everything going for him. He has a grueling but interesting and successful career in business, with many friends, and he is having a really hot and heavy romance with Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt), which is likely to end up in marriage. But he is sent on a business trip, like so many others, and the plane crashes in the Pacific Ocean. Although there were five men on the Fed Ex plane, only Hanks is lucky enough to get into a life raft with any supplies or provisions. Eventually he reaches a deserted island.

If you read the novel by Daniel DeFoe, Crusoe slowly builds upon his own knowledge of how to survive to make his island a fairly comfortable place to live on - despite the threats of cannibals. But DeFoe gave Crusoe one thing that Nolan does not get. DeFoe gives his survivor a companion: Friday. There is no loneliness on Crusoe's island. Nolan does not have such luck. He has to create even his companion: a volleyball with a painted face on it named "Wilson", whom he talks to when he is trying to do anything (and Nolan has to do everything, including rediscover fire).

It's a crushing situation, and leads to depression and some dark thoughts. But Nolan is one determined man - somehow he will get off that island, if for no other reason than that he wants to return to civilization, and best of all to Frears. It is the photograph of Frears that keeps Nolan's sanity together in that long, lonely vigil on the island.

So he finds a cave to live in in the island's rocks, to keep relatively warm and dry in the rain. He does rediscover fire. He does keep a fairly good track of time. He even performs (in one of the most grueling moments of the film) oral surgery on a painful tooth that you have to see to believe.

SPOILER AHEAD: He does get off the island in the end - but finds his problems just as difficult to solve off the island as it was on the island.

I've always been intrigued with Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe", particularly the importance of the items that Crusoe salvaged from the shipwreck, items that Crusoe could not have made himself and which make his survival and the relative elegance of the life he built for himself quite plausible. The real-life inspiration for Crusoe was one Alexander Selkirk who, in 1704, choose to remain on one of the Juan Fernandez islands - four hundred miles from the Chilean coast - rather than continue on a voyage with a captain and on a ship he did not trust. Selkirk was left with bedding, a firelock rifle, some powder, bullets, tobacco, a hatchet, a knife, a kettle, a Bible, his mathematical instruments, and some books. Selkirk's four years on his own were a bit more austere than Crusoe's fictional life, in large measure because of his relatively meager stock of good quality tools. Selkirk also lost a lot of his social skills.

I was interested to see how Cast Away was going to solve the tool issues and how they would deal with a person living on his own for a long period of time. The solutions were simply marvelous: ice skates, volleyball, etc. Tom Hanks is superb in the role.

And as a bonus, the castaway's return home is a fascinating part of the story. The driveway scene between Hanks and Helen Hunt is very powerful and reminds me of the great Emma Thompson/Anthony Hopkins 'book' scene from "Remains of the Day". Highly recommended.

Cast Away was Tom Hanks' second film with director Robert Zemeckis. The last time they collaborated was on the 1994 multi-Oscar winner Forrest Gump. I must admit I was never exactly a huge fan of Forrest Gump, despite being a great admirer of Zemeckis' work. It was a film that painted a rather naive portrait of America and its relationship with the common man. And the special effects (however impressive they might have been) were only a nifty selling-point to wow the Academy award winning crowd. One of the most commercially calculated and overrated films ever made.

Happily, Zemeckis seems to have learnt from his mistakes with Forrest Gump. Because Cast Away is a much more accomplished piece of storytelling. A fascinating portrayal of a man cut off from civilisation, and when he finally returns to it, he's just as shipwrecked. This is the type of film Tom Hanks should be winning Oscars for. Because the film rests entirely on his shoulders. And best of all, there's none of the false optimism that plagued Forrest Gump.

Hanks plays FedEx Express worker Chuck Noland. He is a man who lives and dies by the clock. Always on the go. One minute he's sorting out packaging schedules in Russia. The next he's delivering much needed vaccines in Malaysia. Its a hectic lifestyle, and one that doesn't leave a lot of time for a social life.

Nonetheless, Chuck is in a happy relationship with girlfriend Kelly (Helen Hunt), even though she gets exasperated when they can't even finish a dinner date because his damn beeper goes off. And that's exactly what happens on Christmas Eve. After he's just proposed to Kelly, he's called away for a job. At the airport, he tells her "I'll be right back." Famous last words.

The plane he is on is caught in a storm, and dive-bombs into the ocean. Chuck survives in an inflatable life-raft, just barely, and is washed ashore on an island. Now all alone, Chuck must gather every resource at his disposal to survive. To make it through to the next day.

Cast Away is an outstanding film. One of the great survivalist tales you'll ever see. Robert Zemeckis' direction has never been so astute and intelligent. In fact for my money, Cast Away may be the best film yet to emerge from Zemeckis' mostly excellent body of work.

Before we even get to the island, there are the scenes of the plane crash and Chuck's valiant voyage in his rubber dinghy. The crash is a tour de force of action and effects work. Zemeckis shoots it in a series of frenzied camera angles and jolting close-ups. Its a startling scene, so affecting for its suddenness. And the scene where Chuck nearly gets shredded by an out of control engine turbine stays in the memory and doesn't easily fade.

Only for Zemeckis to outdo himself by staging the equally striking scenes of Chuck in his boat, caught in the ravages of a fierce thunderstorm. And its a brutal scene of frightening imagery. A scene of almost complete darkness, illuminated only by flashes of lightning, highlighting the tiny speck of Chuck and his boat on the vast ocean.

But its when we get to the island that Cast Away really opens up. Zemeckis' direction is clipped and concise. He never shows us more than what we need (and want) to see. The film goes through the motions of Chuck's trials and tribulations. But there's an almost terrifying immediacy to these scenes. Some of them are only about ten seconds in length. Little interconnected vignettes.

Chuck writing HELP in the sand. Shouting for help to no-one in particular. Spending his first night on the island surrounded by the sounds of crashing waves and bird-calls. Exploring the summit of the island. Gathering washed up FedEx packages for supplies. Cracking open a coconut (something that takes a very, very, very long time). Fishing. Sheltering in caves. Cutting himself. Bleeding. And the monumental feeling of ecstasy Chuck feels when he makes a fire for the first time.

Tom Hanks really turns in one of his finest performances here. Certainly his best since Big (another film he should have won an Oscar for). What makes his performance all the more impressive is its almost in complete silence. Which makes his isolation seem even more potent and poignant. And a little eerie too.

Zemeckis also comes up with an unusual method to draw upon Chuck's slowly unravelling mental state. A volleyball that washed ashore too. A volleyball Chuck names Wilson. It becomes like a character in the story. Its Chuck's only companion, and as he feels affection for this inanimate object, you'll find you will too.

Zemeckis constantly keeps coming up with grander and grander developments. None more shocking than when the film flashes forward four years and Chuck is much more lean and hardened by his experiences. Tom Hanks deserves some commendation for losing so much weight for the role.

And his method of escape is clever. Building a makeshift raft from timbers and using a portable toilet cover washed ashore as a sail, Chuck overcomes crashing waves and turbulent storms in his fragile craft to get home. The scene where he loses Wilson is a moment of surprising poignancy. Watching him float further and further away. Ultimately Chuck is saved. But the story doesn't end there.

Once Chuck is home safe and sound, he finds the world has moved on without him. Kelly has remarried, and Chuck is unsure of his place anymore. The ending is bravely not a happy one. There is something very bittersweet to Chuck's sudden salvation crashing into harsh reality.

If you haven't seen Cast Away, you're missing out on a modern classic. An expertly crafted tale of survival that's enthralling from beginning to end.

Chuck Noland is a FedEx employee who lives his life as a workaholic, always working and missing many important dates, for the sadness of his girlfriend Kelly Frears. One Christmas night, when he needs to work, he becomes the only survivor of a harrowing plane crash.

Alone in an island, the poor Chuck needs to be creative and learn how to survive in the exotic place, having many difficulties and problems in the beginning with basic stuff, like how to make fire or drink water from the coconuts. Chuck stays in the island during 4 years, when he decides that his only option to not die in that place, is to try to scape.

I personally like this movie a lot. The cinematography is beautiful, and you can see that many of the scenes were shot in a natural habitat.

Tom Hanks by the way, is great as always: It is incredible how much weight he lose from the beginning of the movie to the end, and also his convincing dialogs with Wilson the Volleyball, as if he was speaking with a person. (Wilson, the ball, by the way, became an idol! LoL)

And is also incredible that FedEX didn't pay anything for the director to make this movie: basically all the story only turn around about it.

Cast Away, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Tom Hanks, is my favorite movie of all time. It's a film that I instantly fell in love with, and is a film that was made perfectly and beautifully to where out of every movie I've seen (so far), it is the best I've seen.

Cast Away tells the story of Chuck Nolan (played by Tom Hanks), who is a FedEx executive that takes his job super seriously and he has a relationship with Kelly Frears (played by Helen Hunt). He leaves for a buisness trip to Malaysia, and then all of the sudden, the plane he is on goes through a horrendous storm, which causes it to crash in the ocean and everyone on the plane dies except for him. He then washes up on a deserted island, where he then begins his own journey of survival and tries anything he can to escape and return to civilization.

Out of every movie I've seen in my life, this is the one movie I can think of that has a perfect beginning, middle, and end, and that's an important thing movies need to have and most films struggle to have that. The story for the film is very simple and straightforward to where the beginning, middle, and end is easy to identify. Beginning; You get introduced to Tom Hanks' character and what he does and his relationship with Helen Hunt's character and him going on the plane that then crashes. The entire middle of the film; Tom Hanks washes up on the island, tries to escape but can't because the waves are too strong, then he's on the island for four years where he then builds a strong raft and finally manages to escape and gets rescued in the middle of the ocean. End; Tom Hanks returns home, Helen Hunt's character is married to someone, and he has to leave her behind, then drops off a FedEx package he had with him the whole time on the island that he did not open, which then leads him at the very end of the movie to find a love interest.

The story is so simple, effective, and worked amazingly well. The pacing for 2 hrs and 20 mins went fast and smooth. There were some scenes that may have dragged on for too long, but not to the point of boredom. It was a way to show how to survive, which brings to the next awesome thing about the film is the concept. The whole survival idea was very unique. You don't get much films like this nowadays, about what a person would do if he was all by himself in the middle of nowhere with very little things to live on. The film is very realistic to the concept of only living on coconuts, crabs, and fish for food, trying to make a fire using sticks, and with no one to make contact with, one of the packages that washes up is a Wilson Sporting Goods volleyball that he puts a bloody handprint on while in a fit of rage and then draes a face on it and names him Wilson and becomes his companion for the four years on the island.

The acting is magnificent. Tom Hanks did a wonderful job a playing a castaway and it was a shame he didn't win an Oscar for the film, but was nominated for one and won other awards. For the great middle of the movie, it's a one man show from Mr. Hanks, with the beginning and end having him work with other people like Helen Hunt, who great in the film as his love interest, and his friend Stan, played by Nick Searcy.

The thing I love about the film the most was what they had to do to make the movie. Before they started filming, Tom Hanks had to gain weight to look like your typical middle aged man. They filmed the beginning and a great chunk of the middle, in which they traveled to a Fiji island called Monuriki. They then stopped filming the movie for an entire year just so that Tom Hanks could lose 55 lbs and grow his hair and beard out for the character development of four years aging on an island. I thought you couldn't get anymore realistic than that, and that alone is why Tom Hanks really should of gotten the Oscar

All in all, with a great story and concept, fast pacing, terrific acting, nice atmosphere and setting, and having unique realism, Cast Away is by far my favorite movie of all time and it's also Tom Hanks' best film ever and Robert Zemeckis' best film he directed. Fantastic film from start to finish.

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.

The movie tells the story of a Fed-Ex worker, Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks), whom find himself, away from his normal life with his love one, Kelly (Helen Hunt) when his plane crash into the middle of pacific ocean and he washed up on a deserted island. Chuck has no choice, but to learn how to survive in the harsh environment, and find the courage to escape his island dwelling, when he's able to. Without spoiling too much of the movie, the structure of this film is divided into three parts: Chuck's life as a FedEx employee, the struggle to survive on the island, and the resolution with Chuck trying to regain his own life back and living with what has change. Each one has this 'show, don't tell', modality of storytelling. The movie doesn't have that much dialogue, which in my opinion works. This allows the beautiful, yet haunting visuals shots to tell most of the film's story. The way, the movie opens up with a quick POV montage shot of the package travelling the work, show how Chuck Noland's lives life under the punctuality of a running clock. The way, Director Robert Zemeckis shot the islands film in slow wide screen, show how hopeless and isolated Chuck really is, where time doesn't really matter anymore. I like how the movie moves from a very fast moving shot to shot pace in the beginning, to slow, near one location standstill. The movie has a lot of spiritual aspect of the film that makes this a great watch. Lots of symbolism like how the angel wings package serves as a McGuffin. It could symbolize an angel watching over him during this whole ordeal or how it shows that he must fly away from the island, and return back to normal home. Again, this could symbolizes, how much driven, he is at his job. It's really up to debate, what this item was really about or what's in it. Glad, they didn't use the deleted scene from the script that actually has Chuck open the box. It would had kill the movie for me. Another symbol is that of Wilson, the volleyball. The character was created by screenwriter William Broyles, Jr. while researching island survival techniques in a beach in Mexico, in which this time, a volleyball washed up on shore. While, talking to a volleyball might seem weird on paper, it makes a lot of sense, as it show, how much people are willing to go for a sense of normal connection, when isolate from others. From a theatrical POV, Wilson also serves to realistically allow dialogue in a one-person-only situation. The movie really does makes a good job to it seem like Wilson, could be a person. In my opinion, he's the most famous inanimate object, put on film. It was heart-breaking, what happen to him, toward the end. Only Tom Hanks can make us feel something for a volleyball, and make it seem believably. In any lessor actor, this might come across as silly or boring. This movie is very engaging, because of him. Tom Hanks is a master of showing great range of emotion with his facial features and the way, he moves his body. You can tell, how much trauma, he went through, the way, he looks at things, or how he reacts. Not only that, Hanks went through, great stress to get his body ready for the role. Hanks gained 50 pounds during pre-production to make him look like a pudgy, middle-aged man. After a majority of the film was shot, production was halted for a year so that he could lose the weight and grow his beard. He look like he had been living on the island for years. This was a very extreme weight lost, that might cause a lot of Tom Hank's health problems in later years. Hanks even was nominated for Best Actor that year for a Oscar. While, Helen Hunt isn't in the film, much. She did a great job as a supporting role. You really can tell, the struggle, she has, with trying to love Chuck, while also trying to move on. The film gives fairly realistic feel for being stranded alone. It's somewhat educational. I like how the movie begins and ends at crossroads. Two possible paths to an unknown future. It's all very symbolic. This movie has a lot of replay value. There are tons of little clever things that change into the timelines of the movie, you can only pick up on, if you watch it, a few times, such as how Chuck wears his shoes, during airplane flights, the irony of the dentist that cause him so much pain or the name of the ranch where the angel wing package came from. Then, there are those slight things, that foreshadow a lot of what will happen, later on the film such as seeing Chuck's sailing certification or the off comment mention of a tooth ache or the song 'Return to Sender' playing the background. While, the movie doesn't have that much music. Alan Silvestri's minimal score was beautiful to listen to, and good enough to win a Grammy Award in 2002. I like how he use nature sound effects to reinforce the feeling of isolation with his music. The weird product placement didn't really hurt the film. This film features a Fed-Ex cargo plane crashing in the Pacific Ocean, but it didn't hurt the company, as the film's success ensured help increased brand awareness. One thing that kinda did, hurt the film, is the trailer that really did spoiled too much. Seriously. Don't watch the trailer until you've seen the film. I like how the film, later helped developed the show, Lost. Overall: A great movie that showcase the triumph of the human spirit under harsh conditions. It's brutal, haunting and painful, yet compelling, enigmatic, & uplifting. This film definitely makes my list of films that I can watch again and again.

it's not my first time to see this movie but it's been a long time since i last saw it, so i found myself, this time, pondering over the high spiritual meanings in this zemeckis masterpiece and decided to share my thoughts with you.

the idea that obsessed me after watching the movie is the spiritual aspect versus the physical one i.e spiritual loneliness versus physical/real one. the movie is inspired by Daniel Defoe's "robinson Crusoe", where the hero goes through a tough spiritual trial on an isolated island for 20 years, an experience which embodies the maxim of "necessity is the mother of invention".

tom hanks is an employee at Fed Ex, he goes on a business trip to deliver some parcels, unfortunately the plane crashes, he miraculously survives but is thrown on an isolated island for four years. on the island he begins to search for every means to survive both spiritual and physical death. he manages to make a house, a fishing net, to light fire and finally make a boat that would take to the middle of the sea where he can find rescue.

but the movie can't just be summarized in those few words it is the battle of man against the wildness of nature and the harshness of isolation. furthermore, it is man's journey inside himself, the hero discovered his abilities and re figured his true self when he was stuck in a situation where he can't find any hand. he was a strong person who didn't give up to the difficulties surrounding him everywhere. he rather managed to maintain hope, even if it is fake, find himself a source of consolation to overcome his loneliness and fill this void, emptiness, vacuum ...etc, he , thus, invented the character of "wilson", kept communicating with the picture of his beloved. i think,otherwise, he would have gone mad.

when hanks goes back to his comfortable,civil life and joins his old community i felt that, may be, he is more lonely than he was on the island, then come the final scene to confirm my feelings. he is standing all alone at a crossroad not knowing which direction to follow or who to go to.

Robert zemeckis did an excellent job in this unique movie. the shot sizes, the camera movement, the transitions, every visual element in the picture was perfect. the cinematography was also great especially the water scenes, the lighting was so convenient for the setting of the events.

on the other side, tom hanks controlled this movie from the beginning to the end; though he scarcely spoke throughout the movie his performance was outstanding in addition to the physical effort he exerted in many scenes. it was very intelligent to make him lose a lot of weight, since he stayed four years on the island eating only crabs and coconuts.

i remember the scene when hanks kept switching the lighter on and off several times after he came home, which sharply contrasts with the suffering he has gone through to light fire on the island. as for the final scene between Helen hunt and hanks, i found hunt so cold, just didn't like her.

to cut it short, the movie was a masterpiece