Greyhound - Tom Hanks Returns To The WWII Film Genre With Diminishing Returns

I make no qualms about this statement:  Saving Private Ryan is one of the best movies ever made.  It's definitely in my top 5 list, and might even be in my top 2-3 movies of all-time.  It's the best World War II movie ever made (in my humble opinion), and a high water mark in the legendary careers of both Tom Hanks and director Steven Spielberg.  Its loss to Shakespeare In Love for Best Picture is certainly one of the all-time upsets in Oscars history.  So my expectations for Greyhound were certainly high after viewing its first trailer.  Then... COVID hit and made this film a "straight to streaming" casualty.  Luckily, I have a free one-year trail to Apple TV+ and was able to watch it this weekend.  The results are a mixed bag.  It's filled with exciting action sequences, but lacks the depth of characters and storytelling I was expecting.

Put simply, Greyhound is essentially the third act of a war film.  It's only 90 minutes in length (actually about 1 hour 20 minutes when you take out the opening/closing credits).  It handles the backstory through a pre-movie credit sequence and gives us one scene with Tom Hanks character before throwing us directly into the mission.  Hanks plays a sea captain in charge of leading a battleship that is protecting allied ships as they cross the Atlantic Ocean on their way to re-supply the troops in Europe.  It's his first run as captain of a ship, and its his job to seek out and destroy German U-Boats as they try to down allied ships.

Like I said earlier, this movie is one long battle... and not much else.  We get a glimpse of the other sailors on the ships, and we hear voices from other ships in the armada, but we never get anything more than that.  Elizabeth Shue also appears in a brief scene to give Hanks' character a little bit of depth, but it's largely a forgettable scene.  I really wanted to like this one, but it was hard to care about anyone besides Hanks' character.  His charm and acting ability is one of the only saving graces of this film.  Hanks is credited as the screenwriter of this one (his fist screenplay credit, ever), and while he does a good job of keeping the pace moving forward, I just wish more was committed to building the backstory.  Imagine if Saving Private Ryan skipped straight to the final battle and only introduced us to characters and story via some titles at the beginning of the film.  That's what we get here.

I'm glad I had the free trial to Apple TV+, however I wouldn't go seeking out this movie if I had to pay for it.  It was a 90 minute movie that needed to be an hour longer.

Enough Said And The Quarantine Movie Lull

It's been months since I've posted on this blog.  A huge part of it is that I, like the rest of the world, have been feeling the quarantine blues.  I've really only done reviews and posts on movies that I see in the theaters.  However, COVID-19 has killed that experience for us, so I didn't really think of this blog or doing reviews.  I've watched some of the "direct to VOD" movies such as The King Of Staten Island (liked it), The Invisible Man (enjoyed it), and Da 5 Bloods (loved it!), but never got around to reviewing them.  As it's becoming more and more clear that movie theaters aren't re-opening anytime soon (Christopher Nolan's Tenet is holding out hope, but its release keeps getting pushed further back and back.), I'm starting to realize that home video will be our only way of consuming movies for the foreseeable future.  This brings me to my next point... we've essentially reached the finish line for new movie releases.  This has forced me to go through my Netflix DVD list (more on that in a moment) to movies I've always planned on watching, but would always put on hold as new movies were released.

Let me start this section with a little story.  Once upon a time, Netflix was a company where you rented DVDs by mail.  It still has this function, but the number of people who pay for this service goes down every year.  But like dial-up AOL, there are still some people who enjoy this service.  I, for one, am a proud member of this club.  It's really the only way to watch new movies on a cheap, consistent basis at home.  I will be a member of the Netflix DVD club until they board up shop on their last service center.  This brings me to Enough Said, a movie I've always wanted to watch, but one that I've skipped over for years.  With COVID killing off the new releases, I'm finally getting to these "I'll get to them eventually" films.  Last night, I had the pleasure of watching Enough Said, a warm and enjoyable romantic comedy, featuring dynamic performances by its two leads, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and the late great James Gandolfini (In one of his final performances.).  I really wish that we got to see more performances like this from Gandolfini before he passed.  He's a natural leading man and is more than able to play characters with heart and flaws.  This film doesn't break any grounds in terms of storytelling, but it's a real treat because of their performances.

Gandolfini and Louis-Dreyfus are both divorced, single-parents getting back in the dating scene.  They're the quintessential "opposites attract" characters.  Like I said, we're not breaking the mold with this film.  These two characters are lived-in and both feel like they could be people you know in real life.  Gandolfini is very charming going against the Tony Soprano character that he was known for.  This film portrays their ups and downs as they form their new relationship.  What I like about this film is that there are plenty of moments that could derail this story and drive the film into slapstick territory, but it never goes that route.  I appreciated that, because it made the story more believable.  I'm not sure if Enough Said is available on streaming platforms, but it's worth a view if you haven't seen it yet.

I'm also not sure when, or if I'll revisit this blog, but I hope to do more posts going forward.