Naval adventures on screen can be tough to follow, with actors shouting back and forth on a small set and action that is limited in allowing us to effectively see and understand what’s going on. The latest Tom Hanks film “Greyhound” certainly suffers from some of that, but does manage to give us some truly beautiful filmmaking at times.
Hanks stars as Captain Ernie Krause, the leader of the battleship Greyhound which has to escort a convoy across the Atlantic during World War II. When a group of submarines assault the convoy it’s up to the relatively inexperienced Captain Krause to keep everyone safe until support arrives.
Director Aaron Schneider is the star here. We’ll get to Hanks in a second. What Greyhound does so well is deliver us with some truly spectacular visuals of the sea battles taking place here. The deck guns erupt on screen, the fires taking place at sea during the nighttime just pop. Some of the sequences and blockbuster shots here are what we’ve been waiting forever to see. The film is also scored beautifully.
What Greyhound does have working against it from the perspective of the uninitiated, is the jargon. In the interest of realism we get a lot of back and forth we don’t understand and it takes place the entire movie. It’s almost a foreign film. Hanks also doesn’t get a true story for us to see through. At just 91 minutes, it’s his shortest film in years that doesn’t involve him voicing a toy cowboy.
He makes it work anyways. “Greyhound” is a good movie. It’s a damn shame this film didn’t get a theatrical release.
Greyhound:
Grade: B
Rated: PG 13
Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes.