Cast Away
“I never should have got out of the car.” Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks) in Cast Away Cast Away is my favorite Tom Hanks film. Hanks’ second collaboration with director Robert Zemeckis tells the story of a Federal Express system engineer named Chuck Noland who is stranded on a desert island in the South Pacific. I am naturally drawn to survival stories that show normal people who confront unexpected situations. The Edge, All Is Lost, Life of Pi, and The Martian have some similar themes that I also enjoy. As always I will be discussing the third act of the film in detail so please consider this a spoiler alert. Time is a key theme of the film. Except for the opening shots in the Texas panhandle, the first act of the film is swift as Chuck rushes from a Fedex hub in Moscow (one of his first lines is “tick-tock, tick tock”) lecturing the employees on increasing productivity, to Red Square, then through Paris to Memphis for an all too short Christmas dinner, then back on