‘Greyhound, good luck surviving the night…’
Nobody plays a captain like Tom Hanks. Greyhound offers Hanks the opportunity to play alongside Stephen Graham in this WWII thriller about an inexperienced Navy commander forced to protect a convoy of cargo ships against a ruthless fleet of German submarines. Now. We’ve seen all this before. The sacrifice. The stirring score. Hanks looking perplexed. And it’s all great, it is, but it’s not really bringing anything new to the table. Hollywood’s greatest leading man can play this kind of role standing on his head (he wouldn’t of course, too much of a pro) and he is suitably inspirational and enlivening here, convincing as both a man of integrity and a great leader of men.
Without wanting to damn Greyhound with faint praise, everything about Aaron Schneider’s film screams competence. The score is elegant and moving. Everything is shot in a way that does justice to what is a complicated situation. The script (penned by Hanks) is workmanlike but compelling. The problem is, nothing in Greyhound really made me feel anything. Schneider signals when we are supposed to have an emotional reaction. A solemn sweeping of strings here, a gaze into the middle distance there, but emotion shouldn’t be conducted, it should be organic and it must be earned. Too often, Greyhound feels mechanical, clinical even, and it’s a shame because Hanks genuinely is great throughout.
I actually started writing this review about six weeks ago, and I thought it was finished, but I’ve just come to publish it and I’ve only written two paragraphs and now too much time has passed and I can’t think of anything else to say about it. So this is it. This is the review. Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?