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Cast Away
20th Century Fox Film Corporation


6.8

based on 32 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 46 votes
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Rate this movie

FILM:

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for intense action sequences and some disturbing images

Starring Tom Hanks, Helen Hunt, Christopher Noth, and Nick Searcy

Hanks stars as Chuck Noland, a FedEx systems engineer whose personal and professional life are ruled by the clock. His manic existence abruptly ends when, after a plane crash, he becomes isolated on a remote island - cast away into the most desolate environment imaginable. (Twentieth Century Fox)

GENRE(S):	Drama
WRITTEN BY:	William Broyles Jr.
DIRECTED BY:	Robert Zemeckis
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: June 12, 2001 Video: June 12, 2001 Theatrical: December 22, 2000
RUNNING TIME:	143 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA

Tom Hanks received an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe nomination for his starring role. (He won the Golden Globe award.)

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A really classic adventure yarn with one of Hollywood's great actors hitting one out of the ballpark. If you're seeing only one movie this season, this is the obvious choice.

100

Baltimore Sun Chris Kaltenbach

It's a startling physical transformation, as Noland goes from flabby desk jockey to lean, mean fishing machine. But even more remarkable is the mental transformation Hanks effects.

Entertainment Weekly Lisa Schwarzbaum

Hanks towers as a near naked, near biblical man. Zemeckis tells his story -- the screenplay is by William Broyles -- with a control magnificent in what isn't shown as much as in what is.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

Finally, the man (Hanks) has delivered a moving, slightly unhappy, and ultimately hopeful story in which squishy love takes a backseat to the wondrous whirlwind of life. The season's most delightful surprise.

TNT RoughCut Andy Klein

Zemeckis is more interested here in getting us thinking (and feeling) than in telling us what to think.

Austin Chronicle Marjorie Baumgarten

A handsomely constructed and executed movie, the kind of effort that deserves appreciation, on its own terms, for what it both dares and accomplishes.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

Bold, ambitious -- and ambiguous.

USA Today Susan Wloszczyna

Just be glad that Hanks and Zemeckis toiled mightily to pull off at least two-thirds of a remarkable achievement.

Chicago Tribune Michael Wilmington

An adventure movie of extraordinary simplicity and power.

Mr. Showbiz Larry Terenzi

A 25-minute third act is far too short to suffice, especially when the previous two hours are as astute and technically impressive as they are here.

Salon.com Stephanie Zacharek

It's mournful and troubling in a way that goes beyond ordinary movie manipulation. It burns clean.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

If there's anyone who can make this ordeal -- and when you're plumb out of characters, it can be an ordeal -- tolerable, and even entertaining, it's Hanks.

Film.com Sean Means

Hanks gives possibly the most compelling performance of his career.

The New York Times Stephen Holden

At its best, Cast Away, like "Titanic," awes us with its sheer oceanic sweep and its cosmic apprehension of human insignificance.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

Hanks's extraordinary acting keeps the adventure involving even though the beginning is predictable, the middle is uneven, and the finale slips into Zemeckis's patented brand of "Forrest Gump" fuzziness.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's a simple message, and it's delivered with a grace and subtlety that's rare in would-be blockbusters.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

The middle 90 minutes, which put Hanks alone on an island without voice-over narration or even a musical background, is as risky as anything Hollywood did this year.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

With its weary introductory and concluding passages, it announces itself as the most typical of fare, a real letdown after that stirringly fresh central part.

Boston Globe Jay Carr

The film's most remarkable achievement, in this culture of clamor, simply may be its decision to keep the volume down, drawing us in as opposed to pummeling us, as most films do.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

The island phase of Hanks' performance is simply amazing.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

Here is a strong and simple story surrounded by needless complications, and flawed by a last act that first disappoints us and then ends on a note of forced whimsy.

LA Weekly Ella Taylor

Solid and inspiring will do nicely for Christmas, but it ought not to be good enough for the Oscar nominations that will almost certainly rain upon this movie's adequate head.

Village Voice J. Hoberman

While "Robinson Crusoe" was a paean to the practical middle-class virtues that allowed its industrious hero (and the nation he represents) to re-create civilization out of nothingness, Cast Away is a far less triumphalist peek into the nothingness at the heart of civilization.

TV Guide Frank Lovece

This is no film for the squeamish.

Time Richard Corliss

The 80 minutes it spends on the atoll alone with Hanks make for engrossing storytelling. The film is less sure-footed back in civilization.

Variety Emanuel Levy

Meticulous, sumptuous production design, and striking visuals compensate for the lack of dramatic momentum in a film that arguably stretches narrative form to its limits.

New York Magazine Peter Rainer

At its most basic level, Cast Away is a graceful and powerfully rendered survivalist saga.... And yet there's something generic about Chuck's plight. The filmmakers don't opt for the usual happy-face Hollywood ending, but even the half-smile they provide smacks of inspirationalism.

Newsweek David Ansen

It’s sad to see such stunning work self-destruct. You walk out haunted by the movie that might have been.

Slate David Edelstein

Hanks and Zemeckis (and writer William Broyles Jr.) are so intent on making an epic of the spirit that they can't bring themselves to acknowledge the comic, narcissistic side of their desert island fantasy. And so on simple, human terms, the picture gets all gummed up.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Comes off as convincing but never compelling. There's a ponderous quality to it, as if it's forever clearing its throat to say something of value that doesn't quite get articulated.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

Too full of its own heavy breathing to work as the primordial storytelling it's aiming for--a so-so adventure story is closer to the mark.

San Francisco Chronicle Mick LaSalle

It will bring joy in a way certainly not intended, as one of the most gloriously and unwittingly silly films ever devised by a major American filmmaker.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.8 (out of 10) based on 46 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Salman H. gave it a10:
Awesome movie, what a great performance from hanks...i could have bear a soundless movie(it was for most of the times).

Paul W. gave it a3:
very superficial. This guy spends 4 years alone in an island and the only things he learn is to fish. I find this unrealistic. In a situation like this anybody would need to find a reason to live, to go deep inside oneself. That is totally missing.

Bit Burn gave it a10:
One of the best movies I've seen in the past 10 years! The storyline is remarkable. What struck me the most is that there was no background music at all when his plane went down and the time spent on his island. Then when he left, the music returned, as he was looking away! A very beautiful movie from start to finish. However, a warning for all you action-packed movies, this one is not for you.

Pat C. gave it a 7:
A modern American Robinson Crusoe, with his man Friday convincingly played by the contents of a parcel that absolutely positively washed ashore overnight. Doesn't have the zing of an epic, but otherwise is believable and absorbing. Life indeed is what happens while you are making other plans. Meanwhile, other people make plans while you continue to live. Good performance by Hanks. He had a ball on the island. Best supporting actor should have gone to Wilson for maintaining an appropriate facial expression and remembering his lines.

Kevin V. gave it a 9:
One of my very favorite movies of the last 5 years, but not for everyone. Requires a viewer predisposed to examine his own values and the direction of his own life. A quiet meditation from a skilled filmmaker (Zemeckis) and actor (Hanks).

Yoon Min C. gave it a 7:
A mainstream Hollywood production(big budget, big name director and actors)reaching for meaning and significance and barely making it to shore. Hanks plays a pushy workaholic American who flies around the global village for Fed Ex. He's blind to everything except his career and his love interest. Stranded alone on an island after the plane crash he's forced to readjust to a radically different kind of existence of surviving on bare necessities, of cyclical time, and in utter loneliness. He's forced to become a primitive and a mystic, succeeding reasonably well as former but not so much as latter, mostly babbling to an imaginary friend in the form of a volleyball. The movie has a somewhat pompous Biblical thrust where modern man is forced into a vast timeless conundrum. As years pass Hanks comes to resemble a prophet meditating in the wilderness. Sadly, the movie focuses far too much on Hank's physical struggle for survival and not enough on his mental struggle to maintain sanity or to attain some kind of peace(for that, there's the truly great Woman in the Dunes). Still, the movie's recalls some of the best moments of Contact--also by Zemeckis--where, too, the protagonist attains a measure of wisdom and humility only after undergoing a profoundly transformative adventure. Hanks hams it up a little in the final scenes but is otherwise immensely likable. Helen Hunt though no great beauty emanates spiritual beauty.

Damian P. gave it a 2:
Someone said to me "not many actors could have pulled off that role". Well, Hanks didn't. I want my money back, my back side was in agony after sitting through all that drivel.

Cast Away 20th Century Fox Film Corporation

Cast Away
20th Century Fox Film Corporation