Review

In Cast Away, an ultimately satisfying adventure, Hanks gets an actor's dream of a lifetime -- to be solo for most of a film -- and single-handedly transforms it into a compelling, sometimes spellbinding tale of survival. Chuck Norland (Hanks) is a workaholic Federal Express systems engineer who says goodbye to his fiancée (Hunt), boards a plane and en route to his next assignment crash lands (in one helluva scene) on a deserted island. Alone and ill-prepared, Chuck must summon all the courage and shrewdness deep down inside to survive this new ordeal. How he manages to discover both makes for often rousing entertainment. The scenes on the island, which make up most of the film's running time, are stunning. Blessed with gorgeous cinematography, Cast Away is able to fully maintain interest even as Chuck goes about the most mundane tasks. The scenes off the island, however, are routine and even trite. These bookend sequences display none of the ingenuity displayed on the island. Thanks to Hanks, though, it hardly matters; he's so good he can make an emotional attachment to a volleyball seem the norm.