Finally, I caught up with this Tom Hanks movie last night.
Leaving aside I think it was totally unbelievable, I found it pretty hard to get a handle on what on earth it was all about,
Is there something pretty obvious I am missing or was it just a very ordinary movie?
All I can recall is that the guy that played Wilson was fantastically believable.
I think its appeal was that it was about an ordinary person placed in an extraordinary situation and how he coped with it. And Hanks is a perfect actor for such a role.
What were you expecting?
If, like me, your standard for “stranded on an island” movies is Enemy Mine, then you’re going to be disappointed. 
I loved the cinematography of the movie, and while it isn’t in my top 10, it’s easily in my top 50. Hanks, who was never heavy, lost about 50 pounds for the role.
One of the things I appreciated about the movie was that it was a non-standard-Hollywood ending; it was realistic, and ambiguous, and uncertain - like reality.
Many of us have idle what-if fantasies, both good and bad predicaments: what if I win the lotto? Lose my sight? Become a movie star? Am attacked by a _____?
One of those is: stranded in the wilderness. This film does a pretty darn good job of showing one ordinary person’s experience with such a scenario, and how so many things we take for granted in civilization are extraordinarily difficult in the wilderness without any sort of preparation.
I thought it was just OK. Maybe it’s because of all of the hype that surrounded it. Or maybe it’s because I’m more an Apollo 13 than a Cast Away kind of guy.
One thing the film was about was how he was changed by the experience. At the beginning, he was a man professionally obsessed with time and efficiency and he had four years in which he had all the time in the world and efficiency wasn’t really an issue.
(BTW, it wasn’t product placement for Fedex, despite what some people on IMDB seem to think. Making him an employee of Fedex was just a way to explain his character and why he might have been on the flight.)
Even if it had been product placement the Fedex stuff really was integral to the film, not only to the theme of time and efficiency, but also aspects such as using the packages washed up on the beach and delivering that last package to the lady at the end. Hard to imagine the movie without it.
My complaint is that the movie skips the interesting part. We go from “I have made fire” to four years later in one jump cut. Then we find out that Chuck had become so despondent that he not only contemplated suicide, but had rigged up a contraption and tested it. I want to know how he got to that state, and how he got past it. I would have preferred a “show” at the time rather than that later “tell”.
The good points, though, are the ice skates (we all laughed when he unboxed them, but I was chagrined to realized I don’t think I would have turned them into an ax. Clever!), the subtle scene with the lighter, and the sadness of the fact that the only thing that kept him going was the thought of his wife, and then to find out she moved on (you were dead!). And I couldn’t be mad at her for it, because, what are you going to do? He was dead. (ish)
On one level it was about a guy who’s life was literally all about the clock and schedules and time limits who found himself in a place where time doesn’t matter at all.
On another it is just a survival story.
And on another level it is about loss (specifically him losing his fiance).
imho, a good gauge to see if you get the movie is your reaction to the loss of Wilson.
That’s funny…the part I was disappointed was left out was right after his rescue. I wanted to see him getting to eat for the first time, getting to lay down in a soft bed for the first time, etc. Not a lot of that…maybe just a quick montage or something. But it skips from him lifting his arm to the tanker to suddenly we’re on a plane and he’s dressed and shaven and obviously all of that has happened behind the scenes.
But it’s still a great “what if” movie, IMHO.
It always bugged me that he delivered the package to the original sender, not the intended recipient.
It’s been years since the package was sent. Perhaps the assumption is that the shipper already replaced the item and wants the original back.
he no longer cares about ensuring that a package reaches its destination. he just wants to meet the person who drew the butterfly.
It bugged me that the movie gave everyone the idea that Chuck should take up with the artist-chick. That’s not what the scene is about.
I also hated the ending - Chuck is at a crossroads in his life, and this is conveyed to the audience by showing him standing at a literal crossroad! Hollywood’s lazy idea of subtle symbolism?
I thought it was a good callback to an earlier scene. On the island, he climbs the hill to get his bearings. And his bearings are, he’s on this very tiny island, almost a rock that happens to be above sea level, surrounded on all sides by vast ocean. He has nowhere to go. In the last shot, his being at a crossroads means he can go north, south, east or west. He can go anywhere he wants.
Pretty realistic. And, it was about Life.
No, it had been returned/refused.
It’s all in the title. Hint: it’s “Cast Away” and not “Castaway”.