Greyhound (2020)

 Score: 2.5 / 5

I'm a sucker for war movies, and the latest in that vein was meant to be released theatrically. It became one of the first major pictures to be released during the pandemic digitally, and frankly I think audiences are a bit handicapped when it comes to appreciating something clearly designed to be experienced on a large screen with surround sound. And yet its incredibly short running time and streamlined narrative probably work better for people streaming stories into their living rooms, and so Greyhound may prove more popular at large than it was with me.

Tom Hanks, who has repeatedly proven himself Hollywood's most prolific and intelligent WWII historian, stars as his typical American hero; that is, the kind of humble everyman whose perseverance and wisdom and hope make him a hero. Here, he plays Commander Ernest Krause, leading a convoy of thirty-something ships from America to England. His warship, the one codenamed "Greyhound," is an escort, and the movie begins when they enter the "Black Pit", an area in the middle Atlantic where the ships are too remote to be assisted by Allied planes. This is Krause's first wartime command, and despite his obvious qualification, Hanks shows us the anxiety and determination his character without "doing" much of anything. Hanks has long been a master of acting shorthand, and it helps that he often plays the same type of character. We won't tire of it, yet, because heaven knows we need more encouraging images of heroes who don't wear capes or tights in this ago of bloated superhero flicks.

But this is no character drama, and the entire movie rotates on its plot, a series of cat-and-mouse chases and skirmishes that effectively encapsulate the Battle of the Atlantic, a war-long effort between German U-boats and Allied forces that has rarely been dramatized on screen. This partly may be because there weren't climactic points to this conflict, as it was more of an open wound, hemorrhaging thousands of lives; it is also surely because until recently, movie technology just couldn't accommodate war movies about submarines in a dynamic way.

Inasmuch as he can, Hanks -- also the writer here -- shows off his understanding of the language of the time, working hard to include as many naval terms and period soldierly jargon as he can. In fact, I'd bet someone in the navy (especially someone who served in the world war or shortly thereafter) would appreciate the authenticity of this verbal world Hanks has crafted far more than a layperson like myself. But, as the film never quite dives into the character of Krause, or indeed any character, and focuses so much on the technical aspects of maritime warfare, we start to appreciate the streamlined quality in a way we might like a History Channel documentary. The problem with this is that the onus of the film must then be placed on plot or spectacle, neither of which the film gets quite right.

Repetitive in a not-quite entertaining way, the grayscale shots of churning ocean waves littered with battleships and periscopes only rarely manage to arrest our visual attention, even as things quickly heat up between explosive conflicts. Swooping camera flybys barely allow us a clear picture of what exactly is happening on the open seas, which may be a valid storytelling choice but does not carry aesthetic heft. As the droning score and monochromatic images continue, and the paranoia of what may be just under the water's edge keeps us frantically looking at the horizon, I wondered if the film is in fact hampered by its own technical prowess. Wouldn't this story have been better served intimately, claustrophobically, without the bird's-eye views that give us frequent breaths of air and effectively distance us from the drama? Then again, "story" is a stretch here, and the movie's economy of time pushes it through the fight to the end, when we realize we were pleasantly distracted but never really moved.