Hanks shines, Cage falters in holiday season

In theaters

CAST AWAY Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Written by William Broyles Jr. 143 minutes. PG-13.

Right on the heels of his commercially successful horror film “What Lies Beneath,” director Robert Zemeckis (“Forrest Gump”) offers “Cast Away,” a much better movie that’s so beautifully streamlined, it should get a special Academy Award just for its restraint.

Indeed, throughout much of this gripping, harrowing adventure film of a modern-day Robinson Crusoe stuck on a remote Pacific island, Zemeckis proves himself a master of nuance, shading and control, only faltering at the end when his populist instincts take over and he presents an ending awash in suds.

But what’s more unfortunate than the film’s ending is 20th Century Fox and Dreamworks’ decision to reveal the film’s ending in the its trailer and television ads.

I’ll never understand it. Why do studios eagerly rob their films of suspense by giving away major plot points? If you’ve seen the ads for “Cast Away,” then you know before going into it what will become of Tom Hanks, a Federal Express manager, when his plane careens into the ocean and he drifts alone to a desolate shore. Those who haven’t seen the ads – or who don’t want to know – should read no further.

After a slow start that serves little purpose other than to be a major plug for FedEx, the film kicks into high gear with the most fantastic plane crash ever caught on film. It’s spectacular – a brilliantly conceived nightmare of airborne metal twisting amidst the violent throes of a vicious thunderstorm.

Smashing hard into the Pacific, Hanks’ Chuck Noland, a chubby everyman who left his girlfriend, Kelly (Helen Hunt), to take this flight abroad on Christmas Eve, narrowly escapes with his life only to be beaten by high waves, winds and torrential rain. Somehow, he drifts ashore and the long, brutal fight for his survival begins.

Without much use for words or any use for a musical score, Zemeckis relies solely on Hanks’ painstaking efforts to stay alive and the raw beauty of the island to carry the bulk of the film. Some of the most poignant scenes involve Chuck’s relationship with a volleyball that washes up on shore with him. Now bearing a face painted in Chuck’s own blood, this ball, named Wilson, becomes Chuck’s Friday – his only friend on an island that seems determined to undo him at every turn.

If “Cast Away” reaffirms nature’s power over modern man, then it’s also about how modern man’s primitive instincts are still a formidable foe against whatever Mother Nature has up her sleeve.

Indeed, as the years pass and Chuck’s once fleshy body becomes a steel rod of determination (Hanks lost 50 pounds for the role), “Cast Away” underscores the sheer power of the human spirit with a giant exclamation point.

The ending, stupidly revealed by the studios, does allow Zemeckis to treat Chuck’s experience on the island almost as something of a gift.

But with Hunt once again playing Helen Hunt and Zemeckis suddenly turning on the sap in a film that nearly escaped it, the experience of watching this otherwise terrific, rousing film – which makes the television show, “Survivor,” look even more ridiculous – is slightly cheapened just when it should have been most poignant.

Grade: A-

THE FAMILY MAN Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by David Diamond and David Weissman. 124 minutes. PG-13.

Watching Nicholas Cage try to be sincere is sort of like watching our new president-elect try to get his mouth around a string of two-syllable words – it doesn’t work and the end result is often a disaster.

Cage’s latest is being touted as a new Christmas classic, but unless you consider 1985’s “Santa Claus: The Movie” a Christmas classic, this big lump of cinematic coal is likely to disappoint.

The film, as directed by Brett Ratner (“Rush Hour”) from an overwritten screenplay by David Diamond and David Weissman, does its damnedest to imitate Frank Capra’s enduring classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” but it consistently only scrapes and digs and claws at the bottom of Capra’s formidable barrel.

And who else should be wallowing at the bottom of that barrel than Cage himself? As Jack Campbell, a big-shot Wall Street investment banker with an eye for hookers and a soul for the devil,

Cage is horrible. With his hooded eyes, slack jaw and blatantly obvious toupee, there’s nothing about the man that suggests he could ever balance a checkbook, let alone understand foreign markets or the constantly changing tides of world currency.

Still, here he is overacting in this sorry mess of a film, which offers his soulless character a second chance at finding a meaningful life when he meets an angel (Don Cheadle) on Christmas Eve.

With Tea Leoni in a fair performance as Kate, the woman Jack left 13 years ago in his pursuit of a more financially rich life, “The Family Man” ultimately drops Jack back into her life so he can see all that he’s missed. In this case, he’s missed living with Kate and their two children in a middle-class New Jersey suburb where he now must sell tires for a living.

False and cloying on so many false and cloying levels, “The Family Man” is so divorced from reality and so reliant on its cliches (a good deal of which are plucked from another classic, “A Christmas Carol”), it comes as the very worst sort of Christmas present – one that’s unwelcome and unwanted.

Grade: D-

Christopher Smith is the Bangor Daily News film critic. His reviews appear Mondays in Style and Thursdays in the scene.