APPLE TV+ MAKES ORIGINAL BATTLE OF THE ATLANTIC

HANKS CARRIES FILM ACROSS THE GREAT OCEAN

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

The Battle of the Atlantic was perhaps the most important naval battle during World War II, lasting from 1939 until 1945 as the Allies began to accumulate supplies and soldiers on the island of Britain by shipping them across the ocean in merchant and naval ships.

The Allies had also created a naval blockade of Germany.

The Germans responded with a fleet of submarines, known as a Wolfpack, to intercept and destroy the shipments.

Tom Hanks stars as Captain Krause in Greyhound (2020). Krause is in command of a naval frigate that protects the convoy from mid-Atlantic attacks.

Hanks, with the role, throws himself into a brief moment in the time of one of the most important battles in naval history.

Stephen Graham costars as the ship’s navigator, Charlie Cole. Graham has played important supporting roles before, most recently in The Irishman (2019) and Rocketman (2019). Graham played Al Capone in the TV Mini-Series Boardwalk Empire (2010-2014), and also played Baby Face Nelson in Public Enemies (2009).

Greyhound is directed by Aaron Schneider.

The film begins almost immediately with the convoy already on the way for Liverpool, England.

Schneider films most of the narrative inside the frigate, using tight camera angles to show actors manning the equipment and conveying important information to the captain.

The director periodically rolls the camera out onto the deck as the battle intensifies and the frigate hunts down the German submarines attacking the convoy.

Filming involves dark images but not so dark as to hide the many supporting actors.

The music score compels several scenes depicting the desolate ocean landscape as the convoy enters the ‘pit’, which is a kind of no man’s land too far away from air support from either side of the Atlantic.

The narrative is rather linear with much of the script about naval strategy chasing German submarines and avoiding German torpedoes with the convoy enroute.

Graham has very little acting to do as his character spends most of the time below deck working ocean charts and calculating nautical distances for the captain.

Unfortunately, Hanks does little more acting and almost breezes through the narrative just as the ships surely pound through the ocean waves.

Hanks wrote the film’s adapted screenplay, based on the naval novel by CS Forrester, The Good Shepherd (1955).

The title credits state that the film has been inspired by true events. Hanks relies on Forrester’s attention to detail, but the film is far from a biopic, however historically accurate.

Instead, Captain Krause seems to be a composite sketch of what naval captains would do to protect the convoy crossing the Atlantic during the Battle of the Atlantic.

Elisabeth Shue has a minor supporting role as Evelyn, the Captain’s girlfriend. Shue is involved in a wrap around in which Captain Krause is initially introduced to the audience through a meeting with Evelyn in a hotel lounge in San Francisco.

Shue then has another brief time on screen as Krause recollects the meeting near the end of his voyage. Shue is miscast in the part, as her acting credentials from such films as Leaving Las Vegas (1995), starring  Nicolas Cage, and The Saint (1997), starring Val Kilmer, suggests she should have much more time on screen, such as reoccurring flash backs to the relationship as a metaphor for family and friends and the reasons the Americans were fighting the war across an ocean.

The film was made for the theatres and suffers a bit from having to be streamed on Apple TV+, although if you have a large screen home theatre system, the film still has a deep impact, particularly with the music score driving the narrative as it does.

The other problem with the film is the 91 minute run time.

This film is relatively short for the subject matter and may have benefitted from an epic approach of at least two plus hours of screen time, perhaps three hours, to develop characters and complicate matters with one or two subplots.

Sam Mendes screened 1917 (2019) in just under 2 hours. 1917 is a very similar film to Greyhound in terms of the appropriate approach to historical material.

Mendes filmed an historical accurate film based on inspirational retellings of the trench warfare experienced by young soldiers during World War I. 1917 is not a biopic though.

Greyhound and 1917 are good films, but just in a different genre than biopic films. These films are historical accurate in the sense that they depict a moment in history, but the lack of a real life biopic character allows for too much dramatization and a too liberal treatment of the human endeavor, causing a lack of trust in the facts and events put before the audience in a manner that they are to accept carte blanche.

Hanks might have better chosen at least one real life captain from the entire Battle of the Atlantic to add authenticity and emotion to the screenplay. Composite sketches are fraught with imperfections, that while making for interesting stories, may not mirror humanity and all the real world character flaws.

Schneider also clutters the film with odd little details, like the ship’s cook bringing up the captain’s meal a number of times throughout the film, and the captain changing from naval boots into slippers. These little eccentricities might be endearing to Tom Hank’s fans as intertextual references to his recent portrayal of Fred Rogers in A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (2019), but they may also have unnecessarily detracted from the seriousness of the subject matter of the present film.

Greyhound is still worthwhile, entertaining and an interesting look at a moment in history.

Hanks is a great actor who can really carry a film as he does for this one. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awarded Hanks the Oscar in a leading role in two consecutive years for his portrayal of deeply challenged characters, the first in Philadelphia (1993) costarring Denzel Washington and Antonio Banderas, and the second in Forest Gump (1994) costarring Gary Sinise and Robin Wright.

Greyhound is an Apple TV+ Original film available on Apple TV+ with a free 7 day subscription.