Cast Away

Cast Away is a modern Robinson Crusoe tale with Tom Hanks in the central lead role as the busy businessman Chuck Noland, who crashes in a plane in the middle of the Pacific and makes it ashore on a small uninhabited island. There he survives for four years with the memory of his girlfriend Kelly as his only anchor.

One day he has enough flotsam to build himself a raft, so after several months of work he bids the island a final farewell and sails out onto the open sea. He is miraculously found, but a bitter disappointment awaits him, for relatives, friends and girlfriend had given him up for dead and therefore buried him. Kelly has found a new man, with whom she has started a family. Chuck realises that he must once again say goodbye to part of his life in order to start afresh somewhere else entirely.

Tom Hanks gives a tour de force performance as Chuck, for in a large part of the film he is the only actor on screen. The closest the film comes to dialogue is when Chuck talks to a ball that he has christened Wilson. Cast Away is nevertheless quite entertaining, even though more than two hours is rather a lot to spend on a desert island.