There is exactly one half-hearted stab at character development: Near the beginning, there’s a 5 min scene where Tom Hanks’ character sort-of proposes to a girl, and she turns him down. We gather he’s a good guy and very religious. That’s all we ever know about him.
We know nothing whatsoever about any other character. They are basically just extras or NPCs, uniformly competent at their navy jobs.
Zero build-up of tension, just one damn thing after another in rapid succession for the whole movie. Unchanging emotional tone. We never get inside the captain’s head, or know what he’s thinking or feeling. Not even a good overview of naval tactics.
I’ve enjoyed many movies about naval battles and submarines, and I never thought a tactical-level movie about destroyers and U-boats could be this boring. And CGI… meh.
Now I’ll have to go and watch The Cruel Sea again to get the taste out of my mouth.
That’s too bad. I heard Hanks being interviewed on Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend and it sounds like a really interesting story … historically speaking. Oh well, it’s only on AppleTV anyway, right?
Interesting. My local reviewer, who I sometimes disagree with strongly but don’t regard as a hack, had exactly the opposite reaction. I was sorta wondering based on his review whether I should bother poking my head into seeing what was up with AppleTV, which is something I have zero knowledge about (other than it exists).
But based on yours I guess I’ll just wait until it pops up on cable. Not that I trust you any better . But with such strongly divergent viewpoints, it is easier to default to my normal lazy mode. I wasn’t dying to see it, so I can wait.
Some positive, but overall 62% critics, 6.4 users.
Richard Roeper at the Chicago Sun-Times:
“Greyhound” relies far too much on slick but obvious and overdone CGI and gets bogged down in the minutiae and jargon of naval wartime maneuverings at the expense of viewer accessibility and character development. …
There are times when Krause calls an underling by the wrong name, and we can see where he’s coming from because we, too, haven’t gotten to know that guy. …
… the battle sequences that look like something straight out of a video game dominate the movie and keep us at a safe distance from getting emotionally involved on a level this story deserves.
David Ehrlich at IndieWire:
A terse and streamlined dad movie that’s shorter than a Sunday afternoon nap and just as exciting…
After 80 tense but monotonous minutes of watching Hanks play a high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse with a fleet of German subs, it’s hard to say if Commander Krause has steered his Mahan-class Destroyer through a dark night of the soul, or if he’s simply managed to stomach a bad case of seasickness. …
The ship’s cramped interiors house a nervous crew of brave and only slightly interchangeable sailors, all of whom are at the mercy of Krause’s decisions. … Alas, these secondary characters are stuck in a rudderless film that wants to refract everything through their commander, but can’t find a way to get into his head
I haven’t seen it yet so won’t venture an opinion, but I will say that, speaking of divergent viewpoints, IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes often greatly disagree on the merits of a movie, but on this one, IMDB pegs it at 7.1 out of 10 (which by IMDB standards is pretty good) while Rotten Tomatoes has a critics’ overall rating of 80% and an audience rating of 79%. Not only is it rare to have IMDB and RT fairly close, it’s also a bit unusual to have RT critic and audience ratings this close.
Based on that, I definitely intend to watch it. Tom Hanks may be a bit overrated (I mean, he’s very competent, but he doesn’t walk on water) but he can certainly afford to be selective about the movies he does, and he did select this one (ETA: I’d forgotten, but Hanks actually wrote the script).
The biggest problem with this movie is that it’s too faithful to the book (The Good Shepherd, by C.S. Forester), which focuses exclusively on the Captain’s POV during his first transatlantic convoy crossing. It’s probably about 70 years too late in terms of appealing to a wide audience, but most of my Navy friends/acquaintances in the surface warfare community think it’s just the greatest. But then they’ve been starving for an answer to Top Gun since… Top Gun. And FWIW, this is not that movie, IMHO.
Like I said, it’s a faithful representation of the book, which was itself a sincere effort to capture conditions of convoy duty during the early part of US a entry into WWII and, from what I can tell, did a pretty good job, but much of the characterization and development takes place in the Captains mind. It’s largely a psychological study of a man who is alone and in control and who, at times, feels wholly inadequate to the task. That opening scene, for instance, captures some of the exposition from the book, with the part about being “fitted and retained” being an important part of his character at the onset. It means he has been passed over for promotion many times (but still found “fit” to continue at his present rank, rather than be forced out of the service, and so “retained” in his present grade) and has somewhat internalized the feelings of inadequacy that come with that, even though (for historical reference) it was quite common for pre-war officers to take longer to progress through the ranks and they could be much older than their modern counterparts. His arc then follows from there, with his feelings of inadequacy being amplified early on as he recognizes he’s made mistakes during the crossing (mistakes which are difficult to call out on screen and still remain faithful to the “quiet professional” depicted in the book as the recognition occurs in his head), but with him ultimately learning that, yes, he is/was up to the task as he sees the convoy through, becoming “the good shepherd” to those placed in his care amidst the wolves.
So, the arc in the book is depicted (as much or more than the struggle against the u-boats themselves) as stemming from an internal conflict of a man who is not certain that he is worthy of the task he has been assigned and doubts his own abilities after years of being told “You’re not good enough,” by higher authority. Unfortunately, since he’s a ship’s Captain, he can hardly go around blathering that to his crew, which means that it’s hard to capture that doubt on screen and still remain faithful to the central—the only—POV character in the book.
That in a nutshell is why the whole movie is wrongheaded.
The book is entirely about the internal POV and deliberations of one man. The movie does not show, or indicate in any way, his internal POV and deliberations.
Far from being ‘too faithful to the book’, it’s not at all faithful to the book.
It only shows the external activities, and that’s simply not what the book is about. The book is about the process of decision making in command. Take that out, and all you have is a dead, empty, boring shell.
If this is dragging in something from elsewhere on the board in an attempt to start a fight, that’s bad. If, as I suspect, this is an attempt to drag in something that didn’t even exist elsewhere in an attempt to start a fight, that’s even worse. You’re on thin ice, here.
The latest issue of Naval History magazine has several articles on the movie, including an interesting interview with the director on its development and how they filmed it. Hanks not only stars, but wrote the screenplay.
No, really, please, in the name of all you hold dear: tell that to Mel Gibson. The world does not need a sequel to The Passion or to see his take on The While Bunch.
I’m going to go against the grain here and say that I liked this movie quite a bit. I can see where people are coming from, but I found that many of the things that likely contributed to people thinking it was boring were the aspects of the film that I enjoyed the most.
It was very “workmanlike” in its construction. Not flashy at all and that made it interesting to me as a “slice of life” portrayal. I liked that we only really saw things from the captain’s perspective. I liked the rapid succession of crises pounding away like a very regular drumbeat. That’s normally tedious in action movies (and clearly so for some people here too) but I found it really shined a light on the unrelenting pressure of having to be constantly vigilant for so long. I thought it was used to great effect.
I didn’t really see the lack of character development either. I actually found the flashbacks to the woman to be distracting and the weaker point of the movie that I felt didn’t add much. But I really did feel the pressure he was under and his moments of self doubt despite knowing that he couldn’t let the crew see that. I thought it was well done and subtly done.
I liked it. It stuck me as having one goal, namely to give a sense of what it would have been like to be an ordinary but competent people under those specifically very trying times. I thought it achieved that very well. I think any attempts to make it more flashy or “Hollywood action” like would have turned it into forgettable schlock, at least for me. The convoluted and false drama and twists and turns and implausible physics of a traditional action/drama movie are something I find pretty dull these days.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. As a former naval officer and destroyerman myself, I thought it was solid. I just don’t see it appealing much to… a general audience. But I’m glad you liked it.
. But with such strongly divergent viewpoints, it is easier to default to my normal lazy mode. I wasn’t dying to see it, so I can wait.