Tom Hanks is a massive fan of World War 2 stuff just like me. He has been involved as an actor, producer, and primary bank-roller for a wide variety of films and series, all of which have been pretty spectacular.
You could say that he has set the bar pretty high as far as this genre is concerned and this is the only reason why I can say that I found Greyhound to be a bit "ho hum" as far as films of this sort are concerned. That isn't to say that this is a bad film because it isn't a bad film. It just isn't as gripping as other films in the WW2 area are concerned and I think a lot of this has to do with the very contained environment that it takes place in.
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Tom Hanks doesn't just star in this film, but he also wrote the screenplay and I suppose that is a very impressive feat that I don't really understand anything about. In this role he plays Commander Ernest Krause who is the commanding officer of the USS Keeling, which was codenamed "Greyhound" during the Battle of the Atlantic and was part of an armed convoy leading 40 or so ships from the United States to Liverpool.
The German U-boats had been sinking any vessel attempting this journey up to this point and it is because of this largely that the United States was drug into the war. I wonder if Hitler regretted that at any point but I suppose if it weren't for this, his aggressions in Africa and movement West towards the US would have probably brought the States into it eventually anyway.
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This film is historically important because for one thing, it was obviously a success or there wouldn't be a film about it, and because of the fact that despite Krause's extensive military past, this voyage was his first time as commander and I suppose you could say that he pulled it off pretty great.
Now, the film is kind of lacking in any sort of dramatic sense such as that which we see in The Pacific and Saving Private Ryan and there is a decisive lack of character development. In lieu of these things, which are normally appreciated in films, we have basically non stop action.
The director (Aaron Schneider) does a fantastic job of creating an extremely eerie sense of being alone and being stalked, which was precisely what was going on when this convoy was being pursued by German U-boats for long stretches of time.
With air-support, submarines are sitting ducks but since the journey across the Atlantic couldn't possibly have air support the entire time due to coasts being too far away for military weaponized aircraft to accompany the entire journey, there was a long stretch in the middle where they were on their own and very vulnerable. This is where the dread sets in and they did a very good job of portraying this on screen. You get a real sense of claustrophobia and feelings though the enemy could destroy you at any point.
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For me, the film invited a bunch of questions such as why is it that the submarines needed to surface at all during combat and this is not explained in the film. I suppose I'll have to look this up later :)
Should I watch it?
Despite the somewhat negative comments I made above this is ONLY in relations to a comparison between this and other Tom Hanks WW2 projects. Compared to those this is not as engaging but compared to basically anything else this is a very exciting film that skips a lot of the dramatic aspects we are accustomed to seeing in Hanks' films and instead it is an all out action bonanza. In that regard it makes for more casual watching than many other films of this sort.
There is a ton of technical jargon that is very confusing when it happens but once I accepted the fact that "perhaps we are not supposed to understand what that means" it was fine by me.
I think that this film can be enjoyed by just about anyone and therefore I definitely think it is worth the 90 minutes of runtime. It is actually surprising to me that this film only cost 50 million to make and they seem to have used their budget very efficiently.
This film is actually not part of the Netflix library as far as I know, but I am sure most people already know "alternate" methods of acquiring it
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STOPI saw the trailer some time ago, which like all current trailers, shows too much of the film. But I haven't been able to see the movie
well if you can get it for free it is worth seeing and you don't really have to pay full attention to it. For me it would be a great film to switch on while I deep clean the living room the TV is in
I agree with your sentiments here. The movie was very engaging and kept you glued to the screen because there is almost zero downtime... sometimes I am looking for films that do exactly that.
oh for sure. It was still a great film, just not terribly Hanksy. it seemed more like a Statham or Neeson film.