Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Finch’ on Apple TV+, a Bleak and Whimsical Sci-fi Vehicle for Tom Hanks

Exclusive to Apple TV+, Finch is one of those Tom Hanks movies that makes you wonder why Tom Hanks bothers with it. I mean, he can do whatever he wants, right? All he has to do is tweet, “I want to play Wonder Woman,” and Gal Gadot will get pink-slipped. His previous two movies are similarly minor — Greyhound and News of the World were only memorable because he’s in them — and now one glimpse of the poster for Finch makes a body wonder if the perennially lovable Tom Hanks, one of history’s greatest film actors, is going to push a shopping cart across yet another post-apocalyptic wasteland with Chappie’s little brother. But some material exists to be elevated to greatness by great talents, and Tom Hanks forever deserves the benefit of the doubt.

FINCH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: I don’t know what year it is, but it’s in the future, and just not far ahead enough in the future — and plausible enough — to make one feel unsettled about our own future. Finch Weinberg (Hanks) wears a radiation suit as he scouts an abandoned grocery store with a little four-wheeled robot he calls not Wilson, but Dewey. Finch is delighted to find some cans of dog food, not for himself to eat, but for his dog, named not Wilson, but Goodyear. It’s 150 degrees out, the Earth’s atmosphere is shot and the sun’s nasty, nasty UV rays will crispy-fry human skin in just a few seconds. Oh, and Finch has a fever, as the beeping monitor on his wrist reminds him, and he coughs and has nosebleeds, as sick-and-dying people in movies always do.

A storm kicks up so Finch and his bot make their way back to the Tae Technologies building, where one assumes our hero used to work before a solar flare shredded the ozone layer, initiating civilization’s collapse. Finch has a little bunker there, powered by a lone spinning windmill. He has a library with books — one about about gamma rays, one about radiation poisoning, Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” a curious publication labeled APOCALYPSE SURVIVAL MAY 2028 — and running water and a fridge and a turntable hi-fi and, of course, his dog, his beloved dog, an adorable little terrier, the symbol of innocence and hope standing next to a man who’s a lone spinning windmill on a gray and dusty windswept plain, weathered and corroded and destined to stop spinning one of these days, who knows how soon, but it’s surely too soon.

Finch also has a lab, where he Geppettos a new robot (voiced and motion-captured by Caleb Landry Jones) into existence. It’s tall and super-strong and intelligent, a learning AI that repeats its RoboCoppian directives back to Finch: one’s about never harming humans directly or indirectly, and another’s about taking care of the dog after Finch is ashes and dust. Finch is a guy perfectly content to talk to himself for years, even before the catastrophe, and especially now, a time when whatever humans remain have discarded empathy for survival. Well, now he has a not-human to talk to in this robot, who isn’t even finished downloading the contents of Finch’s database when they have to vamoose. A superstorm is about to level the place, but Finch is ready for just such a circumstance. No time to pack the vinyl collection — I weep! — so he throws together the essentials, and he and the dog and Dewey and the new robot pile into a 1984 RV he’s modded into an off-roader. Where are they going? A place on one of Finch’s beloved old postcards, San Francisco. Hey soundtrack person — cue up Talking Heads’ “Road to Nowhere,” would you?

I know what you’re thinking: So when does the robot get a name? Is it Wilson? No, it’s not Wilson. But the robot is naive and stupid but also keenly perceptive, a sponge for information and stimulation you might say, and it’s not long before it’s klutzing around and muttering hair-trigger apologies and not understanding analogies and metaphors — you know, like the comic relief. They get a flat and the robot lifts the RV like a Jack so Finch can change it. “I enjoyed being the jack,” the robot says, so Finch suggests that his name should be Jack. “No, Jack is a tool’s name,” the robot quips. It settles on Jeff. Jeff’s a big help on this journey, which is long and depressing and occasionally fraught with treacherousnesses. Before you know it, Jeff learns how to drive the RV and drive Finch a little bit crazy, although it’s not clear who’s the Felix and who’s the Oscar in this situation. Regardless, Finch keeps coughing and sharing his wisdom with Jeff, who takes it to heart, even though he doesn’t have a heart. Or does he?

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: NUMBER 5 IS ALIVE! So we’ve got Short Circuit, WALL-E, The Road and The Quiet Earth as the most obvious reference points. Another is, of course, Chappie, and perhaps it goes without saying that replacing Die Antwoord with Tom Hanks is like trading in a Pinto for a Lambo.

Performance Worth Watching: Shocker — Tom Hanks! Possibly because he’s the only actor we really see in this movie (outside a brief glimpse of a couple others in a brief flashback), but also because he’s Tom Hanks, who’s one of few people on this planet capable of smoothing the jagged edges of a movie that shoehorns great whimsy and sentimentality into a thoroughly bleak scenario.

Memorable Dialogue: A flustered Finch rips into Jeff: “I know you were born yesterday, but it’s time for you to grow up!”

Sex and Skin: None. NOPHTF: No Other People Here To F—-.

Our Take: Oy, this plot. Its gears and servos are visible, and its heart is mechanical at its core. But Tom Hanks — assisted by Jones’ amusing and eccentric turn as the robot who seems to be transmorphing into a poet — really Tom Hankses this one, patiently building tissue around that robot heart, pumping blood through it and nurturing it into something that comes shockingly close to being emotionally engaging.

Of course we don’t want to see Finch die, but that’s just the movie manipulating us into its corner; that we find emotional traction at all in this story is wholly on the shoulders of the ever-capable Tom Hanks, who’s wily enough to know that he should lightly shrug off the character’s rote, sad backstory and dig into the scenes where he tries to explain to Jeff what trust is, or appreciates fleeting moments of simple joy. Although you’d think we’d see Finch spend more quality time with the dog, but the movie just leans on the pup’s yappy cuteness, and assumes we’ve fallen in love with the thing, justifying its emphasis on many silly and/or quasi-profound scenes in which man bonds with robot as the former tries to teach the latter about the many intangibles of life.

Director Miguel Sapochnik likely wants to see us load our hankies with snot and tears, and for better or worse, doesn’t really succeed. He’s better at drawing us into the setting, a generically dangerous badlands threatening the principals with all manner of threats, big and small, practical or existential. Not to give too much away, but Finch isn’t a movie built around violent and perilous action sequences; it’s quieter and more contemplative than that. We don’t need another thrill-a-minute wasteland romp anyway; we already have Mad Max: Fury Road and many, many others to scratch that itch. Rather, Finch arrives with base survival removed from its algorithm, and is ultimately about passing on the best things about humanity — ironically, to a robot who may or may not have a flicker of honest-to-gosh life within it. If anyone’s going to sell this stuff with the plaintive earnestness it needs, it’s Tom Hanks.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Don’t expect Oscar-season accolades for Finch, which is more Minor Tom Hanks. But it’s thoughtful escapism, made richer by its amiably charismatic star.

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 Finch on Apple TV+