Greyhound (2020)
Directed by Aaron Schneider
A first-time captain leads a convoy of allied ships carrying thousands of soldiers across the treacherous waters of the "Black Pit" to the front lines of WWII. With no air cover protection for 5 days, the captain and his convoy must battle the surrounding enemy Nazi U-boats in order to give the allies a chance to win the war.
32 connections found
View:
32 films that influenced Greyhound
What critics say influenced Greyhound
The ideal version of this story needn’t last as long as the unabridged Das Boot , but in only an hour and 20 minutes, it’s difficult to convey Krause’s exhaustion or the endurance required to outlast his assailants.
Perhaps remembering such gut-wrenching movies as Das Boot, Hanks and Schneider streamline everything to the point where the other characters hardly matter.
I was at least expecting something claustrophobic in the line of Wolfgang Petersen’s seminal Das Boot (1981).
You can see the effect Hanks and director Aaron Schneider, whose last directorial effort was 2009s Get Low , are going for — an immersive, no context tour-of-duty onboard a besieged warship — but it doesn’t have that filmmaking excitement of, say, Das Boot .
This briny war film can take its place among the greats – The Cruel Sea, Western Approaches, Das Boot, In Which We Serve.
Every encounter with a sub involves coordinates and orders being relayed ad nauseam, which yes, could be fashioned into high drama (see Das Boot ).
Dunkirk was about how to get men off a beach and 1917 was about the delivery of a message.
Greyhound also departs from the valueless forensic depiction of warfare seen in Dunkirk (2017).
Much like Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, it is a calculated choice to foreground an anxious ticking clock scenario.
For a certain subset of dads — drunk on Dunkirk, still high on 1917 — Greyhound will no doubt be catnip, Hanks himself after all being Dad über alles.
If alarm, urgency, subtle bravery, silent resolve, etc., is all you’re looking for, “Greyhound” will likely satisfy, but many would point you to “Dunkirk” for a similar war film with much more depth, heart, soul, and meaning.
But compared to gritty and classic World War II films such as “Saving Private Ryan” and “Dunkirk,” it’s just a very disappointing and trite film, where the action and character development are far inferior to other World War II movies.
Retaining the commander’s deep seated Christian beliefs from the novel, oft-referenced, assist in channeling the heroism of studio era Hollywood efforts, and Hanks’ kind but restrictively rigid persona as Krause is sometimes reminiscent of the Christian sacrificial lamb played by Edward Woodward in The Wicker Man (1973).
And, in a touch that evokes 1957’s The Enemy Below , with Robert Mitchum and Curd Jürgens , Krause is repeatedly taunted over the radio by a U-Boat commander who somehow knows a lot about their mission.
Hanks has skippered a picture that stands with the best of them, movies like “The Enemy Below,” an action-packed thriller with pathos, patriotism and military professionalism.
While not quite up to the level of "The Enemy Below" (the Robert Mitchum American destroyer vs. German U-boat spectacle), this entertaining film leaves little time for thought.
Advertisement
Like Peter Weir’s 2003 classic, “Master and Commander,” which in retrospect seems like a kind of miracle, “Greyhound” immerses you in the world of seamen at war, in this case the early years of WWII.
Tom Hanks writes himself into World War II and sells everyone’s grandparents an Apple TV+ subscription with the DAD-liest naval warfare movie since Master and Commander , Greyhound , a lean and detail-oriented “battleships versus U-boats” thriller that’s all boat, no bloat.
Greyhound keeps its focus on observation and decision, something Peter Weir also did in Master and Commander , set on a British ship during the Napoleonic wars.
Once in a great while, we’ll see something like Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World , which straddles the line between character investment and military history deep dive.
Master And Commander is one of the greatest dad movies ever made.
Even Crimson Tide and The Hunt for Red October are sparse, but make up for it in other ways.
It has uniforms, certainly, but nothing like Master and Commander‘s “lesser of two weevils” scene* , or even that moment, common to almost every Naval battle movie (certainly Master and Commander and Crimson Tide) when the captain has to sacrifice a good man to save a ship.
Watching Greyhound, I couldn’t help thinking of another nautical thriller, Tony Scott’s Crimson Tide (1995).
There’s never a sense of more human flaws, like Gene Hackman in “Crimson Tide.”
This briny war film can take its place among the greats – The Cruel Sea, Western Approaches, Das Boot, In Which We Serve.
An interesting comparison to Hanks as a more modern ship’s commander in Captain Phillips (2013), the old-fashioned universality of Greyhound , a WWII thriller boiled down to its most basic components, is not far off from the Noel Coward scripted debut of David Lean in 1942’s In Which We Serve .
Although this aspect of the war might not have gotten as much attention, it makes for a very cinematic experience and, because of modern technology, is wildly more sophisticated than movies made during the war like Humphrey Bogart’s 1943 Action in the North Atlantic could be, despite their patriotic and entertainment value.
Advertisement
Even Crimson Tide and The Hunt for Red October are sparse, but make up for it in other ways.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Greyhound features a decent fraction of the Hanks performance in Captain Phillips and the hemmed-in qualities of a sturdy submarine thriller a la U-571 or The Hunt for Red October .
The Hunt for Red October is a masterwork in this respect, but Schneider does only a so-so job clarifying the tactics involved, though he revels in the primitive mechanics of the work, with officers mapping out courses on glass, with grease pencils and protractors.
It’s essentially The Cruel Sea on steroids, and it needs the largest screen available and the loudest possible speakers to be truly appreciated.
Combining various elements of “The Cruel Sea,” “The Caine Mutiny,” “Run Silent, Run Deep,” “Hacksaw Ridge” and “Dunkirk” (among others), “Greyhound” is a mostly fine movie that offers a great lead performance through how much is reserved and not said.
This briny war film can take its place among the greats – The Cruel Sea, Western Approaches, Das Boot, In Which We Serve.