Delayed Reaction: Greyhound

Premise: A Naval commander tries to protect a merchant ship convoy from the Germans in WWII.

 

There aren't a lot of people who can treat making a $50 million movie the way grandpa treats his train set that has taken over the basement. While it's not a new part of his personality, part of Tom Hanks' status as "America's Dad" is his love of the valor of war. From his participation in Saving Private Ryan to his role producing Band of Brothers and The Pacific, Tom Hanks has proven his WWII fanatic bonafides many times over, so when he decides to write his first screenplay in nearly a decade, it's no surprise that it's a WWII naval thriller.

 

Is it fair that Tom Hanks is uniquely situated to have his whims indulged this way? No. Of course not. There are hundreds of performers who, had things broken the right way, they could have the kind of clout he has and deserve it just as much. That said, he is the one with the right mix of good breaks and savvy career choices to get $50 million to produce a movie when someone hears that he's writing a screenplay.

 

I've said many times that the WWII well is just about dry. If someone is going to make another WWII movie, they better have a specific angle or niche. We're past the days of making a WWII movie just to make a WWII movie. There have been enough movies about the Battle of Midway. We don't need another one about the nuts and bolts of it. I can get behind something like Nolan's Dunkirk because of how it plays with time and functions more as a mood piece. JoJo Rabbit works, because there aren't many movies from the perspective of a little Nazi boy: a comedy, no less. So, the real question with Greyhound is if it's different enough to justify its existence.

 

My answer: just barely. This is a lean movie. Like Dunkirk, it's stripped down of all its nuts and bolts. It's the bare minimum required to even be a movie. It's more like a 90-minute chase scene. We get a few lightly established characters. In particular, we meet the first-time naval commander played by Tom Hanks. He has a love interest played by Elisabeth Shue who he's trying to get back to, but that's about all we really know about him, and he's by far the most fleshed out character.

 

This movie is very good at throwing you right into the action. It's tense pretty much throughout. The U-boats and Germans are treated like Bogeymen. The movie pulls off the impressive feat of making naval warfare actually interesting. It's really easy to make men and planes interesting since they are agile and fast. Ships are big and slow. It's hard to do anything abruptly. Thanks to some good use of rough seas, rain, and night, I never got bored by this mission.

 

In fact, my biggest complaint is that this gave me flashbacks to all the "protect the convoy" video game levels I've played in my life: my least favorite mission type. The movie also doesn't stop to teach you anything, so you either have to already know the lingo or be ready to pick it up with context clues. Hank's script is definitely going for accuracy over audience-helpfulness.

 

I'm being a little unfair to Aaron Schneider who directed the film. It's in some part his movie too, I assume. This is practically the first time he's worked in 11 years though. I'm comfortable attributing most of what does and doesn't work about this movie to the producer/writer/star of the film who is the reason this was made, not him.

 

Verdict: Weakly Recommend