Cast Away

Tom Hanks' powerful, brutal and mature story.

Though Hanks comes across as blandly as ever, at least his solid performance shows he's up to carrying half a movie on his own, and Zemeckis' direction is at first as busily efficient as the protagonist.

Hanks's Everyman quality has never been more aptly utilized: He's the perfect stand-in for all of us who never made it to Eagle Scout.

Chuck has flashes of ingenuity that filled me with the thrill of discovery and invention, and stretches of failure that I felt just as acutely.

Cast Away isn't the first to recognize our modern need for primal tales, but it is among the most accomplished. It plugs straight into our unplugged fantasies.

Hanks conducts a master class in acting by showing a man losing his sense of himself in fractional gradations.

Hanks earned a well-deserved best actor Oscar nomination, carrying much of the action without talking to anyone but himself for a Wilson volleyball he finds in a washed-ashore Fed-X box.

Tom Hanks is the perfect actor for the role.

"Cast Away" is an exceptionally well-crafted exploration of the survival of the human spirit. It's a movie unafraid to consider the full complexity of life.

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