By: Amanda Guarragi
Greyhound is based on the 1955 novel ‘The Good Shepherd’, it was adapted by Tom Hanks, who also stars in the lead role, as Commander Ernest Krause. The film follows a US Navy Commander on his first war-time assignment, he was in command of a multi-national escort group defending a merchant ship convoy under attack by submarines in early-1942 during the ‘Battle of the Atlantic’. It is yet another generic war film, that is filled with a bombastic sound design and score, that went above and beyond, to elevate the story in some way.
There are some redeeming qualities in this film because of the uniqueness with the camerawork from director Aaron Schneider. At times the direction almost didn’t match the dullness of the story and the weak performances from everyone. The technical aspects like the sound design, score, sound mixing, cinematography and practical effects were all solid and made the film look quite pleasing. For a film that takes place at sea, the visuals were important and the horror of being at sea, during a war was definitely effective. The editing was fairly mediocre and the constant fades to black, with the time stamps, made it feel disjointed and almost episodic. Apart from the final battle at sea, there was no length of time where I felt anything for these characters.
It was a very lacklustre war film and it is because the writing just wasn’t there. It is almost hard to believe that Tom Hanks wrote the screenplay because of how one note the story was. I admit that he tried to construct a different structure for it and it did look promising but something just wasn’t connecting. It feels like the entire budget went directly to the practical effects because it looked like a very expensive film. It felt larger than it should have and that may have been the issue, I can’t even put my finger on it.
Greyhound is a war film that attempts to show the darkness of the waters during World War 2, in a unique way but the story is not strong enough to make the journey interesting to the viewer. The technical aspects of this film overpower everything else but the somber atmosphere at sea made it quite boring and the characters were emotionless throughout the film. It had so much potential to be a great film but the content just wasn’t there.
Candid Cinema 