Greyhound (2020)
dir. Aaron Schneider
Rated: PG-13
image: ©2020 Apple TV+
There’s something not quite right with the new World War II action film Greyhound. There are numerous thrilling moments contained in its taught, 91-minute runtime, to be sure. I lost count of the number of times an image, or a sound, or a stunning sequence of battleships in action gave me chills. The problem is, all those individual moments never add up to a whole that’s greater than the sum of its parts.
I felt what star/screenwriter Tom Hanks – this is the third feature-film screenplay from America’s Dad, after That Thing You Do and Larry Crowne – and director Aaron Schneider were trying to give me: a tense, non-stop thrill ride of a war film that’s lean on plot and packed with heart-stopping adventure. But it’s a little too flimsy on plot – one inexplicable scene actually highlights this fact – and the action, while quite rousing in brief moments, is too mired in CGI and rain-soaked scenery. The exciting effect is fleeting at best.
Greyhound is based on the 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by C.S. Forester. In their marketing for the film, Sony Pictures applied the loosest possible use of the phrase “inspired by actual events.” It was, in the sense that World War II actually happened. And the U.S. and British navy sailed ships across the Atlantic during said war. But Commander Ernest Krause, the film’s hero, and everyone else depicted in the movie are fictitious.
It’s 1942, and Commander Krause is in charge of an Allied convoy of destroyer ships which are escorting a group of supply ships to Liverpool across the “Black Pit.” That’s a stretch of the Mid-Atlantic that is out of range for the convoy’s protective air cover. Despite his age and rank, this is Krause’s first wartime command. His mission is to protect the convoy from the German U-boats infesting the dangerous route.
Cinematographer Shelly Johnson sets a foreboding tone with her dark and ominous photography. But just like a superhero movie that tries to hide too much CGI work under the cover of night and rainstorms, much of the action becomes muddled in the atmosphere. There are a few harrowing moments throughout the picture, ones that any die hard war film aficionado won’t want to miss. A torpedo skimming off the side of Krause’s ship, the USS Keeling (radio call sign, Greyhound), is one. That same ship coming just inches from colliding with a much larger merchant ship is another.
One of the biggest problems with Greyhound is actually one of its most admirable qualities. The film has a sense of exacting detail as far as U.S. Navy protocol and procedure. We see how updates from the radar room are relayed to the commander via a seaman with headphones repeating everything he hears. Unfortunately, a series of repeated updates on the enemy’s position doesn’t make for the most thrilling action. The film is obsessed with Navy process, to a fault.
Hanks’s script includes just one scene off the ship and out of battle. In a flashback, Krause meets with the woman he loves, Evelyn. Actress Elisabeth Shue is completely wasted in the throwaway scene, which feels like a way to give us some rooting interest in Krause, and nothing more. The painfully self-conscious dialog in this scene includes the line, “Seeing you coming around the corner; it’s the greatest feeling in the world.”
I honestly don’t know if I mean it as a compliment or as an insult when I describe Greyhound as the That Thing You Do of WWII action movies. Its heart is certainly in the right place, and it manages to be thrilling in several sequences. But the overall effect is a little flat and ultimately forgettable.
Why it got 3 stars:
- Hanks’s script is lackluster, and his performance in the central role is a stalwart one, if a little stodgy. I want to be surprised by Tom Hanks. Even Jimmy Stewart – the actor Hanks is most often compared to – made a Vertigo every once in a while. Ultimately, Greyhound is defined by this trait – unsurprising.
Things I forgot to mention in my review, because, well, I'm the Forgetful Film Critic:
- The audio of speeches from Churchill and FDR that open the film are rousing.
- There are character moments for Krause in the movie – refusing to eat while on duty; not liking his sailors to curse in front of him; his attentiveness to prayer – that don’t quite come across on the screen. I got the distinct feeling that these moments were probably much more fleshed-out in the source material.
- Throughout the film, a German U-boat captain breaks into Greyhound’s radio signal, broadcasting taunting transmissions about how his wolf pack – he calls himself Grey Wolf – will hunt the Allied ships down, one by one. It is a genuinely chilling motif.
Close encounters with people in movie theaters:
- The U.S. release date for Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster Tenet, which the entire movie industry has pinned it’s hopes on for a post-pandemic resurgence, has been moved back a third time, this time to Labor Day weekend. Greyhound premiered exclusively on Apple+. It’s probably a movie that would have benefited tremendously from a theatrical exhibition.