'Greyhound' Movie Review
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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00:00Hey guys, it's Sean O'Connell, the Managing Director here at CinemaBlend, with a movie
00:03review of Tom Hanks' latest film, Greyhound, which is coming to Apple TV Plus starting
00:08on Friday, July 10th.
00:09Air escort to Greyhound.
00:10You will now be out of range of air cover for the next five days.
00:11Safe travels to England.
00:12How many crossings does this make?
00:13This was my first.
00:14I'm going to let you guys know whether it's worth your time to get into the film on the
00:27streaming service, but before we do that, do me a favor, go down, hit subscribe, turn
00:30on your notifications.
00:31We are trying to keep up to date with all of these movies coming to the streaming services
00:35that you have available to you in your homes, so we want to make sure that you see our reviews
00:39and know which ones are worth your time.
00:43Greyhound is Tom Hanks' return to World War II, only this time it's a submarine battle
00:49instead of the D-Day approach that he took with Steven Spielberg in Saving Private Ryan.
00:53The thing about Greyhound is that Tom Hanks not only stars in it.
00:57He also wrote it and you might think that is really intriguing, but I'm here to tell
01:00you why that's a little bit of a problem for the film.
01:03You see, Tom Hanks as a person is deeply involved in history.
01:07He seeks it out on his own to read it for his own personal pleasure.
01:11He really enjoys reading about military strategy and all the things that went through our major
01:17battles, which is why he's been responsible for some of the most memorable World War II
01:22stories that we have seen in pop culture over the past few decades, whether it be Saving
01:26Private Ryan or all the work that he did on the excellent television series Band of Brothers.
01:31However, here in Tom Hanks' screenplay in particular, Greyhound gets really bogged down
01:36in the type of jargon that you would expect to hear from submarine commanders.
01:41It's a lot of talk about coordinates and positions and where ships are.
01:45We have hits directly on the convoy.
01:48The Wolfpack's haunting us.
01:51U-Boat, starboard bow!
01:53When a captain is trying to bark these orders or commands at a crew, even in the midst of
01:59what's supposed to be a really tense battle, you can get lost in some of the vocabulary
02:05that comes with being period authentic.
02:07Fire as they dare!
02:09I think Hanks went above and beyond to make sure that the history was correct in Greyhound,
02:13and I trust his instincts in terms of putting that story together from that perspective,
02:17but it didn't make it interesting.
02:19I almost wish that he had another co-writer that helped him not only develop the characters
02:24around him, because it really looks like Tom Hanks and a bunch of no-name actors who don't
02:28necessarily know who they are or get invested in their characters.
02:31They might have allowed him to step back from the dry history of it all, focus a bit more
02:36on the tension, and make Greyhound a more intriguing watch.
02:42Not to pile on Greyhound, but the CGI in the film really took me out of it and made it
02:46feel more like the Polar Express, like the animated cartoon feature film that Tom Hanks
02:52did with Robert Zemeckis, and not in a good way.
02:56And what disappoints me most about this is that, fine, I understand that you need CGI
03:00in order to recreate a World War II era period film.
03:04However, Tom Hanks has shown us over the years that he is fully capable of doing physical
03:10acting in period authentic films, not to keep going back to Saving Private Ryan, but to
03:15also go back to the ones he did with Robert Zemeckis, including Cast Away, where he was
03:19actually filming on a deserted island, where he took the time in between a huge gap in
03:25the middle of the production of Cast Away in order to lose a ton of weight and grow
03:28a huge beard, and then they resumed filming.
03:31Tom Hanks is dedicated to the craft enough to make sure that the physicality of a role
03:34comes through.
03:35He also, doing with Robert Zemeckis, everything that he had to do with Forrest Gump, shooting
03:39on location and going around to all the different places where they needed to to make sure that
03:43Forrest Gump felt as authentic and true to period as can be.
03:47You can do this, and I know that Tom Hanks is willing to do this, so it's a little bit
03:51disappointing that Greyhound relies as heavily on green screen and CGI that it does.
03:56During a recent interview that we participated in with Tom Hanks, a press conference that
04:00he did for Greyhound, he admitted that they shot on the USS Kidd, which is grounded outside
04:05of Baton Rouge.
04:06It's in the water, but it's not going anywhere, and they used that in order to capture the
04:09deck of the boat, but then they filled in everything else around him with the magic
04:14of technology, and it's great we have all this stuff at our fingertips, and you can
04:18do this.
04:19I mean, technology's amazing nowadays.
04:21You can make things look really convincing.
04:23I didn't think the CGI in Greyhound looked convincing enough, and it always felt like
04:27Tom Hanks standing in front of a green screen looking at submarines that I just knew weren't
04:31there.
04:32All right, let's get to my final thoughts and star rating for Greyhound.
04:38I'm only giving it two stars out of five, and, you know, it's possible that the movie
04:43might have looked better on a big screen.
04:45It was due to go to theaters.
04:47It was supposed to arrive in June, obviously with everything going on with theaters still
04:51being closed.
04:52These films are finding a new home on streaming services, and Apple TV Plus stepped in to
04:56give a Greyhound a platform, so I have to judge it based on how I saw it, which was
05:01on my television set, and it just looked like an expensive TV movie, and that was a little
05:07bit sad.
05:08Now, with the full experience of Adobe Cinema and the sound that would come with it, it
05:13might have enhanced everything that was going on, but I don't think I would have gotten
05:16over the fact that the script really just gets bogged down in military speak, and that
05:21I never really cared for anybody that wasn't named Tom Hanks in the cast.
05:25It's a bunch of young actors who I've never seen before and didn't get to know anything
05:29about them over the course of the story, and even with Tom Hanks, there are times when
05:33Tom Hanks is able to lose himself in a character, and you kind of forget for a little while
05:37that you're watching one of the most famous actors in Hollywood nowadays.
05:41This always just looked like Tom Hanks wearing World War II gear in a movie, a lean 88-minute
05:47movie, but still, 88 minutes that you're probably going to want to get back after you sit down
05:52and watch it.
05:53So, two stars, Greyhound, sorry Tom.
05:55Maybe you give this a shot on Apple TV Plus though, I mean, it's sitting there waiting
05:59for you if you have the streaming service, so if you do, check it out.
06:02Come on back here, hit the comments down below, tell me whether you agree with me or whether
06:06I'm completely wrong.
06:07I love to hear that all the time as well, too.
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