Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Greyhound’ on Apple TV+, an Old-Fashioned Tom Hanks World War II Thriller

Tom Hanks’ World War II naval thriller Greyhound has navigated turbulent skies and dealt with derailments before finally parking its wheels on Apple TV+. As is the case with many planned theatrical films in 2020, the movie rocketed past a couple release dates due to shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, forcing Sony to settle for a streaming release. That’s something its high-profile all-American star — who famously endured a bout with the virus in March along with his wife, Rita Hanks — lamented due to its big-screen audio-visual ambition. But maybe it’ll still be worth a watch on our smallish screens.

GREYHOUND: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: TOO MANY SUBTITLES: TIMES, DATES, PLACES, ETC. I’ll simplify: After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, forcing America into WWII, the U.S. Navy began assisting Britain in its conflict with Nazi Germany. Feb., 1942: Capt. Krause (Hanks) finally gets an opportunity to commandeer his own destroyer, the Greyhound, which will traverse the North Atlantic, running point on a convoy of 37 ships stocked with troops and supplies. The journey includes a harrowing two-day stretch in the middle of the ocean that’s too far out from either side for air support. They call this maritime no-man’s-land the Black Pit — yipes — because it’s the perfect place for “wolfpacks” of German U-boats, or submarines, to pick off ships with torpedoes.

So our captain has his work cut out for him. Two months earlier, which would be after Pearl Harbor: Prior to his departure, he meets to exchange Christmas gifts with his lady, Evelyn (Elisabeth Shue). He gives her a star ornament. She gives him monogrammed slippers. He says they should get married. She says she’d rather wait until after the war, the implication being, she doesn’t want to be a widow too soon. Grim. But they aren’t spring chickens. They know what they’re dealing with. These are handsome people, but they wear reality on their faces.

Back to the high seas: Kearse says bye-bye to the airplanes and keeps heading due east. A few beats later, the radar pings. U-boat. Bearing down. Orders are barked. Grease pencils scribble across glass. Switches are flipped. Knobs are twisted. Someone please fetch the captain’s sheepskin coat. Sonar? Sonar. Coordinates are passed on. Comms are comm’d. Maneuvers become evasive. Guns are fired. They got ’em. The mates cheer. But the captain just looks sad. Souls, lost. Will he finally eat something? He pauses to pray over a slab of ham and a cup of coffee. A silent moment. It’s just begun. There are more Nazis in this pack. And there’s still an hour of movie left.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Greyhound features a decent fraction of the Hanks performance in Captain Phillips and the hemmed-in qualities of a sturdy submarine thriller a la U-571 or The Hunt for Red October.

Performance Worth Watching: If you’re not watching Tom Hanks in a Tom Hanks movie, then it probably has Streep, Denzel or DiCaprio in it.

Memorable Dialogue: Tom Hanks-as-a-Navy-captain is always, always polite, even when dictating a message to a flunky about his intent to blast a Nazi sub to hell:

Kearse: I’ll escort to comm convoy, we’ll run it down.

Flunky: “I’ll escort to comm convoy, we’ll run it down.”

Kearse: Wait, wait — “we’ll run it down thank you.”

Flunky: “We’ll run it down thank you.” Aye aye, sir.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: My dad would love Greyhound. Hey Dad, you should watch it. It’s a tight, exciting war movie, and Tom Hanks is in it. I’m sorry it’s only on Apple TV+.

I picture Hanks banging out the screenplay on a vintage typewriter — clack clack clack ding! KACHUNK — so he can chatter procedural dialogue that might be dead-eye accurate or Hollywood hooey — who but a seaman can tell — but is nonetheless convincing. The relatively brief pauses between torpedoes and orders pertaining to starboard rudders or whatever allow him to develop Kearse as a man of great duty, faith and honor, a man willing to do what he must, but never exalting in the loss of life, even when it’s faceless fascist stooges taunting him over radio transmissions. His men respect him so much, they immediately apologize when they curse.

In his captain’s hat, sheepskin jacket and monogrammed slippers, Kearse is a good man, and Hanks, who has played Capt. Sully, Capt. Phillips, Capt. Miller and Mr. Rogers, is good at playing good men.

Maybe the character could be more interesting, but that’s kind of beside the point. Adapting C.S. Forester’s novel The Good Shepherd, Hanks and director Aaron Schneider (Get Low) emphasize the minutiae of maritime battle and balance it with the satisfying whooshes and whumps of near misses and direct hits. The film is in-the-moment thrilling, when Kearse is torn between ordering a rescue or responding an attack, when the Greyhound gets skinny and threads the needle between two rushing torpedoes. While far from original, the movie is content to be itself, a sturdy genre exercise that’s crisply directed, edited to a taut 90 minutes and pleasing to the eye despite this being an old-fashioned movie propped up with a bevy of newfangled CGI effects. (Maybe those effects wouldn’t be quite as seamless on the big screen; I guess we’ll never know.)

In the midst of a long, dark night of death and destruction, Schneider guides the camera up, over the melee, above the clouds to the electric-green waves of aurora borealis. Is this the puppeteer hand of Kearse’s god hovering overhead, or a profound but cold display of unfeeling beauty? Interpret away. Perhaps it’s destiny at work, and destiny in movies like Greyhound is so often just.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Greyhound ultimately is Minor Tom Hanks, but he still lends a modicum of depth to a gripping adventure.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Greyhound on Apple TV+