If you've watched this movie, I bet you remember Wilson. You remember the time Chuck (Tom Hanks) spends stranded on the island. That's probably 2/3s of the film, and we see Chuck as he learns how to sustain himself, how he learns how to open coconuts and use the blade of an ice skate as a cutting tool and mirror. How he has to knock out his own infected tooth with a rock and the skate's blade. We also don't visually see but learn how he's able to spearfish and use math to plan his escape the tide that surrounds the island.
But I'm convinced that without the frame of the movie -- the beginning 20 minutes, but especially the ending 20 minutes, this film wouldn't be nearly as good as it is. I've been watching a lot of rom coms lately, and this is not a rom com, although it does have elements of romance, for sure.
Kelly (Helen Hunt) never gave up believing that Chuck was alive. That said, four years pass, and she has to live her life. That means she got married and had a daughter. When Chuck finally does return, they can't get back together. It's sad. The film teases the possibility, but they are both decent people. Even if, as Kelly admits, Chuck is the love of her life, they can't be together, and Chuck never presses the issue. Romance works that way sometimes. Loss is part of it.
He tells his therapist that he was just glad Kelly was with him on the island. Initially, he did give up hope and had plans to kill himself, but once he realized his method of suicide wouldn't work, he committed to living. And as he says to his therapist, you have to keep breathing, because the sun will come up, and you never know what the tide will bring in.
It's sort of funny that he opens all the Fed Ex packages that drift to the island except for the one that has angel wings on it. He ends up delivering that package, because as he tells the Moscow crew at the beginning of the film, what's inside may be of vital importance to the person receiving it.
This package arrives four years late, but Chuck leaves it on the porch with a note, saying that the package saved his life. Rural Texas is a weird place for the tide to come in, but he stops at a crossroads, and a random woman stops to check on him. She's nice but maybe a little flirty. When she drives on, Chuck notices that the same angel wings on the box is also on the back of her truck. The film ends at that point, but you know his next move is to drive back to her ranch. He will see what the tide has brought in for him -- it turns out he had two women (guardian angels) with him on the island...
What was in the box? I don't think it matters. What matters is how the box brought him to this new woman, and his possible new future. That's what matters. I do think it's funny that the director joked that it contained a water-proof satellite phone. Fed Ex apparently also ran an ad saying it contained that, as well as other useful survival gear for an individual stranded on an island.
Good film, but it's probably the last 20 minutes than push it from good to great for me.
Rating: 5/5 stars
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