If you love Tom Hanks shouting numbers at people, Greyhound is the movie you’ve been waiting for. Available on Apple TV+ Greyhound isn’t demanding much when it comes to attention commitment, but if you’re not yet an Apple TV+ subscriber, it also can’t be said that this is the title that should convince you to sign up. Here's CinemaBlend Managing Director Sean O'Connell's review.
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00:00 Hey guys, it's Sean O'Connell, the Managing Director here at CinemaBlend with a movie
00:03 review of Tom Hanks' latest film, Greyhound, which is coming to Apple TV+ starting on Friday,
00:08 July 10th.
00:09 "Air escort to Greyhound.
00:10 You will now be out of range of air cover for the next five days.
00:11 Safe travels to England.
00:12 How many crossings does this make?"
00:13 "This was my first."
00:14 I'm going to let you guys know whether it's worth your time to get into the film on the
00:26 streaming service, but before we do that, do me a favor, go down, hit subscribe, turn
00:30 on your notifications.
00:31 We are trying to keep up to date with all of these movies coming to the streaming services
00:35 that you have available to you in your homes, so we want to make sure that you see our reviews
00:38 and know which ones are worth your time.
00:44 Greyhound is Tom Hanks' return to World War II, only this time it's a submarine battle
00:48 instead of the D-Day approach that he took with Steven Spielberg in Save and Private
00:53 Ryan.
00:54 The thing about Greyhound is that Tom Hanks not only stars in it, he also wrote it, and
00:57 you might think that that is really intriguing, but I'm here to tell you why that's a little
01:01 bit of a problem for the film.
01:03 You see, Tom Hanks as a person is deeply involved in history.
01:07 He seeks it out on his own to read it for his own personal pleasure.
01:11 He really enjoys reading about military strategy and all the things that went through our major
01:17 battles, which is why he's been responsible for some of the most memorable World War II
01:22 movies that we have seen in pop culture over the past few decades, whether it be Save and
01:25 Private Ryan or all the work that he did on the excellent television series Band of Brothers.
01:30 However, here, in Tom Hanks' screenplay in particular, Greyhound gets really bogged down
01:36 in the type of jargon that you would expect to hear from submarine commanders.
01:40 It's a lot of talk about coordinates and positions and where ships are.
01:45 "We have hits directly on the convoy."
01:47 "The wolfpack's haunting us."
01:50 "U-boat starboard bow!"
01:53 And when a captain is trying to bark these orders or commands at a crew, even in the
01:58 midst of what's supposed to be a really tense battle, you can get lost in some of the vocabulary
02:04 that comes with being period authentic.
02:07 "Fire as they dare!"
02:08 I think Hanks went above and beyond to make sure that the history was correct in Greyhound,
02:13 and I trust his instincts in terms of putting the story together from that perspective,
02:17 but it didn't make it interesting.
02:18 I almost wish that he had another co-writer that helped him not only develop the characters
02:23 around him, because it really looks like Tom Hanks and a bunch of no-name actors who don't
02:27 necessarily know who they are or get invested in their characters, they might have allowed
02:32 him to step back from the dry history of it all, focus a bit more on the tension, and
02:36 make Greyhound a more intriguing watch.
02:41 Not to pile on Greyhound, but the CGI in the film really took me out of it and made it
02:46 feel more like the Polar Express, like the animated cartoon feature film that Tom Hanks
02:52 did with Robert Zemeckis, and not in a good way.
02:56 And what disappoints me most about this is that, fine, I understand that you need CGI
03:00 in order to recreate a World War II era period film.
03:04 However, Tom Hanks has shown us over the years that he is fully capable of doing physical
03:10 acting in period authentic films, not to keep going back to Saving Private Ryan, but to
03:15 also go back to the ones he did with Robert Zemeckis, including Castaway, where he was
03:19 actually filming on a deserted island, where he took the time in between a huge gap in
03:25 the middle of the production of Castaway in order to lose a ton of weight and grow a huge
03:28 beard and then they resumed filming.
03:30 Tom Hanks is dedicated to the craft enough to make sure that the physicality of a role
03:34 comes through.
03:35 He also, doing with Robert Zemeckis, everything that he had to do with Forrest Gump shooting
03:39 on location and going around to all the different places where they needed to, to make sure
03:43 that Forrest Gump felt as authentic and true to period as can be.
03:47 You can do this, and I know that Tom Hanks is willing to do this, so it's a little bit
03:51 disappointing that Greyhound relies as heavily on green screen and CGI that it does.
03:56 During a recent interview that we participated in with Tom Hanks, a press conference that
03:59 he did for Greyhound, he admitted that they shot on the USS Kidd, which is grounded outside
04:04 of Baton Rouge.
04:05 It's in the water, but it's not going anywhere.
04:08 They used that in order to capture the deck of the boat, but then they filled in everything
04:12 else around him with the magic of technology.
04:15 It's great we have all this stuff at our fingertips and you can do this.
04:20 Technology is amazing nowadays.
04:21 You can make things look really convincing.
04:23 I didn't think the CGI in Greyhound looked convincing enough, and it always felt like
04:27 Tom Hanks standing in front of a green screen looking at submarines that I just knew weren't
04:31 there.
04:32 Alright, let's get to my final thoughts and star rating for Greyhound.
04:38 I'm only giving it two stars out of five, and you know, it's possible that the movie
04:42 might have looked better on a big screen.
04:45 It was due to go to theaters.
04:47 It was supposed to arrive in June.
04:49 Obviously with everything going on with theaters still being closed, these films are finding
04:53 a new home on streaming services, and Apple TV+ stepped in to give Greyhound a platform.
04:58 So I have to judge it based on how I saw it, which was on my television set, and it just
05:02 looked like an expensive TV movie, and that was a little bit sad.
05:07 Now with the full experience of Adolby Cinema and the sound that would come with it, it
05:13 might have enhanced everything that was going on, but I don't think I would have gotten
05:16 over the fact that the script really just gets bogged down in military speak, and that
05:21 I never really cared for anybody that wasn't named Tom Hanks in the cast.
05:25 It's a bunch of young actors who I've never seen before and didn't get to know anything
05:29 about them over the course of the story, and even with Tom Hanks, there are times when
05:33 Tom Hanks is able to lose himself in a character, and you kind of forget for a little while
05:37 that you're watching one of the most famous actors in Hollywood nowadays.
05:41 This always just looked like Tom Hanks wearing World War II gear in a movie, a lean 88-minute
05:47 movie, but still, 88 minutes that you're probably going to want to get back after you sit down
05:52 and watch it.
05:53 So, two stars.
05:54 Greyhound.
05:55 Greyhound.
05:56 Maybe you give this a shot on Apple TV+ though.
05:57 I mean, it's sitting there waiting for you if you have the streaming service, so if you
06:00 do, check it out.
06:01 Come on back here, hit the comments down below, tell me whether you agree with me or whether
06:05 I'm completely wrong.
06:07 I love to hear that all the time as well, too.
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06:20 (upbeat music)