Captain's Orders: GREYHOUND

With Greyhound, Tom Hanks has written a film perfectly fitted to his Movie Star persona. Like in his great recent films Sully and Captain Phillips, he’s playing a model of good leadership, built sturdily upon moral virtue, human and humane in the face of unbearable danger and terrible odds. This World War II thriller casts him in the role of a career Navy man captaining his first ship. The mission is to escort a convoy of supply ships from America to England. As the film begins, they’ve lost their air support from the States. It will be a few dark and stormy days until they meet up with the English planes that will take its place. During this time, they will be hunted by a pack of German U-boats, intent on picking off the convoy one by one, sowing confusion and wearing down their resources until they can move in for the kill. The enemy, heard only in ominous taunting radio transmissions, overtly declare themselves wolfish predators, but the sturdy filmmaking, from director Aaron Schneider (Get Low), makes them just as much shark-like, surfacing as if with a fin, circling like Jaws. Strategic aerial shots emphasize the game of cat-and-mouse on display, a bit of literal Battleship maneuvering. They’re on the open ocean, but the film is mostly claustrophobic. Close-quarters close-ups and medium shots in cramped situations have the men (from Hanks to second-in-command Stephen Graham and a host of young character actors) pressed against the bulkheads, straining against the waves, manning their battle stations.

The tension never slacks. It’s a barrage of snappy jargon and terse commands, every gesture and decision drawn with verisimilitude and effective B-movie snap. Based on a novel by Horatio Hornblower author, and WWII vet, C.S. Forester, it feels like it gets every detail right. The radar pings. The water crashes. The rudder shudders. Hanks commands the film with his quiet steady hand, a good man who feels the weight of responsibility, each life resting heavily on his shoulder, each mistake settling uneasily on his soul. His screenplay is a model of efficiency, starting as the mission crosses into its most dangerous passage, with only an exceedingly brief early flashback to humanize his character’s home life. It proceeds full steam ahead into an elegantly simple 80-minute suspense sequence. The clean, crisp frames and pulse-raising ticking clock make the slowly diminishing hours to rescue pass with the adrenaline of stalking enemies, exciting strategy, and painful losses. It’s an effective thriller, not because the whole war or a decisive battle is at stake, but because these particular boats, and the souls on them, matter. Because they’re full of people, and their captain cares, and every wasted round, every wasted second, is one precarious step away from their goal, we care. Every ounce of sentimentality, of relief, is hard-fought, and well-earned.

Life at a Funeral: GET LOW

Get Low is the latest example of how competent direction of a middling script can be elevated, even saved, by a host of great actors. The direction from Aaron Schneider, in his feature debut, is flat and flavorless. The script from Chris Provenzano and C. Gaby Mitchell is full of phony cornpone sentiment that aims only at those with the most easily softened emotions. All involved in the creation of the film should be thankful that they attracted actors who can cut through the falseness to convey some emotion truth that would otherwise be nonexistent.

At the center of this modest little depression-era tale is the great Robert Duvall as a man who has lived like a hermit for 40 years. Naturally, he has also been cultivating an aura of mystery and danger among the gossiping people of the nearby town. He’s getting old and feels the weight of time and age pressing down. He heads in to town and asks the local funeral home to throw him a funeral party while he’s still alive so he can invite “everyone who has a story to tell” about him.

The owner of the funeral home is, of course, a welcome Bill Murray. He calmly sizes up the odd request and offers to get it done. Murray, and his young associate Lucas Black, set about setting up the party and grappling with the old man’s eccentricities and inconsistencies. There’s small humor to be found in the ways these three men try to get the invitations out by radio and by posters. Duvall brings to the role distant warmth that balances Murray’s sly, shifty subtlety and Black’s fresh-faced good-intentions.

The plot is wrapped around a profoundly uninteresting, though not entirely uninvolving, mystery about the true intentions behind Duvall’s self-imposed exile that is haltingly teased and ultimately revealed, but by then I cared even less. Early on, Duvall stares at a faded photograph of a young woman in a shot that fades into a close-up of a flickering flame, annoyingly telegraphing part of his past. She’s his old flame (get it?) that he has carried a torch for (get it?). Do you think the secrets in this old man’s past have anything to do with all of this flame imagery? If you do, don’t worry. Schneider won’t give you a chance to miss a thing, even if you try.

The hermit’s past is not as interesting as the film seems to think it is, but at least it gives a reason for Sissy Spacek and Bill Cobbs to enter the picture and remind us why they’re so good. Spacek has a nicely restrained emotion to her behavior while Cobbs towers over his scenes with a well-earned sense of command and a welcome melodious voice. Their performances are wonderful to watch. They even overcome the contortions the script puts them through to avoid revealing things prematurely.

Glancing back over what I’ve written, it sounds like I disliked the movie more than I actually did. At the time, I found it passably enjoyable. Only afterwards has my head been full of small complaints. This is a perfectly fine little film that’s quick and unchallenging. It’s a chance to see great actors working, using their craft in ways that go above and beyond that which this particular film calls for. It’s a nice 100 minutes with an amiable company of top-notch actors. It’s a pleasant enough diversion, enjoyable on its own terms, but it’s certainly nothing more than that.