- No Opinions on Tom Hanks’ Greyhound The movie now airing on Apple TV + may ignore the sad truth that some of the movie’s best moments will be incredibly difficult for an untrained audience to understand.
- The film attempts to portray one of the most critical and often overlooked battles of World War II, the Battle of the Atlantic.
- Greyhound It is irritating because it does not provide the additional scenes that would help everyone understand the massive extent of these maritime engagements and the dangers that each Atlantic crossing poses to the ships and crews involved.
If it weren’t for the new coronavirus, we would be living normal lives and would have gone to see Tom Hanks Greyhound in theaters at the time of its release. It’s not just because it’s a WWII movie, which is enough to want to see it, it’s a Tom Hanks World War II movie. The Oscar winner not only plays the main character, a Navy captain who just received his first command, but also writes the script based on CS Forester. The Good Shepherd. Add to that the fact that the film is about one of the war’s most neglected battles – the fight for the Atlantic between the Allies and the deadly wolf packs of German submarines, and it ends with an incredible premise. It is a film that can have a lot of action and character development while offering you a slice of one of the crucial and most devastating conflicts of war.
But this is the year of the new coronavirus. Film studios have postponed their box office hits and other films are released online. Greyhound it’s in the latter category, with Apple scoring the distribution rights for the film. It can be streamed online through Apple TV + at your convenience. Watching the movie in a suitable cinema would be a much better experience for any WWII movie, but Greyhound It may be best suited for online streaming. That’s because the more you look at it, the more you will want to enjoy it. The problem is, you won’t understand what happens most of the time, and you will miss how epic the subject of Greyhound it really was.
To get the scope of the movie, you must understand that the Battle of the Atlantic is truly the longest battle ever fought during World War II. For one, you have the Allied Merchant Fleet tasked with dispatching critical supplies and men from the US to the UK and Russia. These supplies were essential to support the war effort against Germany and would ultimately play a considerable role in the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Without this massive supply effort, neither Britain nor the Soviet Union would have been able to sustain their campaigns against the Axis. Nor would the United States have had any means of actually putting the boots on the ground. The battle lasted from 1939 to 1945, with Germany deploying deadly submarines that would continually disrupt the supply line. Thousands of ships were sunk despite the best efforts of the allied navies to defend them. Hundreds of submarines paid the price. This is also how the Allies were fortunate enough to capture the critical Enigma machines that encrypted German communications: the encryption was later decrypted, giving them access to Germany’s plans.
Greyhound It is intended to capture only 48 hours of testing. But at only 91 minutes long, the movie is too short to really demonstrate some of the points it’s trying to make. Yes, Hanks is an excellent choice for the role. It is not his first rodeo of World War II, and it shows. The story is really about Captain Krause and the huge cost of the position. Without spoiling any of the scenes, he is more than adequately prepared for the task. This may be your first command, but you know your ship, crew, and mission from the inside out. He knows the sea and how the enemy operates, reacts quickly, and is always in command of the fleet when contact is established. He struggles with losing men, just as he struggles with having to send enemies to their deaths. But it is all part of the job.
While some of the supporting characters have their moments, Greyhound gives us a look at the Battle of the Atlantic through the captain’s eyes. Everything is from your perspective, from the bridge. And this is where the most significant flaw in the film can be found.
The audience is trapped with the captain and crew on that bridge for most of the action, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. My colleague Andy Meek highlighted the same point in his review of the movie a couple of weeks ago. This is how we understand who Krause is and how he commands his men, and we obtain the urgency of his actions. During those 48 hours, the fleet lacks air cover that would be of great help in detecting and bombarding enemy submarine packages. Escort ships have to rely on their training and the tools at their disposal to detect submarines, intercept them, and destroy as many of them as possible.
From the first contact, the audience will be on the edges of their seats. Attacks are inevitable, you have no idea which ships will be attacked first or who will win. Captain Krause quickly adapts to the situation, issuing quick orders as he directs the Greyhound to respond to what is happening on the battlefield. But when he shouts his orders, and when they are repeated and confirmed, you realize that you have no idea what is happening.
How big is the allied fleet? Where are the destroyers in relation to the fleet? Where are the submarines? How does everyone move during battle? Which of Krause’s orders makes immediate sense and which doesn’t? Where is the destroyer Greyhound when the submarines attack the rear? Do they even attack the back of the spine while simultaneously striking the front? This is not a spoiler because I legitimately have no idea what happened.
Unless you have been trained to understand the commands and headings to navigate the sea, you will be trapped most of the time. You can choose to stop the action and read what those titles might be, and then read a bit more to find out which parts of the ship Hanks is referring to. You can also rewind to try to understand the position of ships and U-boats at the start of battle. There are clues throughout the movie that the director gives you to get the ball rolling.
But that is not enough for the usual viewer. Everyone on the bridge speaks the same language as Krause. Whether or not they agree to the orders, they are not confused. They know exactly what action is needed. They know where the submarines are, where the rest of the fleet is, and they understand the danger. They have been trained for this. The public has not.
The script does little to translate that into visuals to help the untrained audience. Not to mention that watching Greyhound in a theater it would not give him control over reproduction. You couldn’t afford to pause the movie to search online for everything about the sea battle you can’t understand.
The few special effects used to give us a panoramic view of the battle do not help. That’s especially true considering that everything that happens is in a stormy context, making the action even more difficult to follow.
Compare Greyhound With any WWII movie that involves any kind of battle, you will quickly understand who is fighting whom, where everyone is coming from and the tactics employed. You don’t have to be a specialist in any type of war. You don’t have to know tanks to Fury to work. And it’s always perfectly clear to the public where the danger is Saving Private Ryan It comes from when there is a fight to fight.
By failing to provide additional information about what is happening in the Battle of the Atlantic, the creators of Greyhound robbing the audience of the additional emotion that comes from fully understanding the situation. It also decreases the power of weather scenes. And no amount of Google while pausing the movie will make up for it. Add 10 more minutes of wide camera angles that address the positioning of different ships and U-boats in play during various battle scenes, and Greyhound It could become a fantastic representation of one of the most important battles of World War II.
Chris Smith began writing about gadgets as a hobby, and before he knew it, he was sharing his views on technology topics with readers around the world. Every time you don’t write about devices, you unfortunately don’t stay away from them, even though you desperately try. But that is not necessarily a bad thing.
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