Greyhound is Tom Hanks’ first screenwriting credit in nine years, and his first that he hasn’t also directed. It’s based on C.S. Forester’s The Good Shepherd about a naval commander in charge of a convoy of merchant ships who must defend them from U-Boat attacks during an Atlantic skirmish in 1942. It’s territory very familiar to Hanks, who of course co-created and wrote and directed episodes of HBO’s Band of Brothers. Like many sixty year old white men, he’s very interested in World War II.
It’s a wonder then that he didn’t direct the movie himself. Perhaps he didn’t feel capable with the action-driven nature of the narrative -his two other feature directing efforts didn’t require a lot of technique. Instead Sony brought on Aaron Schneider, director of 2009’s Get Low to steer the ship as it were.
Greyhound is in some ways a bit of a difficult film to discuss because there isn’t a lot to it. It is a movie that is exactly what you’d expect going in, no more no less. It could perhaps seem impressive in terms of its sense of scale, though only so far, given its’ entirely CGI environment and the inability to actually be seen on a big screen right now. Otherwise it’s nothing much more than competent, and in fact rather dull honestly. Hanks isn’t a bad screenwriter, but his script adapts perhaps too closely the strict naval language no doubt characteristic of Forester’s book and the authentic world it’s based in. As such there are chunks of dialogue incomprehensible to average viewers without an understanding of military terminology, commands and codes and tactics that additionally drop so fast they’re difficult to process in action. Because of this, it is remarkably easy to lose interest in what’s going on or what the fight even looks like. And the shame of this is that the actual story of Greyhound is pretty damn compelling.
There’s a lot of built-in tension to the idea of a bunch of merchant vessels escorted by a small collection of international warships being preyed on in unprotected waters by unseen submarines. There’s a Jaws-like level of danger there. But the weight of that isn’t felt so much, because the movie places its focus almost entirely in the wrong place. Greyhound is a character piece more than anything else -for almost the duration of the film everything is squarely centred on Hanks’ Ernest Krause, a veteran naval officer in his first command. Thus, the film really hones in on the pressure that is on him, the uncertainty and anxiety bubbling beneath the surface and the difficult choices he is forced to make, while externally maintaining an authoritative demeanour. Hanks of course, plays all this very well in spite of the limitations it poses on the characters’ palpable identity; his restrained performance is definitely one of the films’ only real saving graces. But this occupies too much of the narrative investment at the expense of caring at all about the convoy itself. The action never leaves the U.S.S. Keeling -the main ship nicknamed “Greyhound”; we meet barely any other characters from the warships, let alone the merchant vessels in most danger here. A few are sunk, but only Krause is our siphon to caring about them -this despite the movies’ postscript, which details how many were lost during such crossings, informing us that was a major intended theme. And often, even in such moments of tragedy, it feels like we’re asked to sympathize more with Krause’s reputation and ego than the real human devastation.
This is facilitated by the movies’ human element apart from Krause being near non-existent, with the likes of Stephen Graham and Rob Morgan playing mere functionary roles aboard Greyhound alongside a slew of less recognizable actors in interchangeable parts. Krause has a briefly appearing love interest played by Elisabeth Shue to provide the basest of stakes in his characters’ survival -reminding me a lot of Jane Downs’ appearance as Kenneth More’s wife at the beginning of A Night to Remember. As in that film, Shue only lends moral support and reinforces their relationship before sending her man off on his appointment. We don’t even get a reunion at the end. The films’ brevity is a blessing; it’s a singularly driven story that shouldn’t be dragged out. But if it had been a little longer, or just distributed its plot more evenly among people other than Krause, I feel it would have resonated a lot better.
There is one shot that I really like though. The film uses intertitles to separate the days, as is often the case of true story war movies (though this one isn’t); and just ahead of one of these as the convoy is still under attack at night, Greyhound attempting to rescue survivors of a downed ship, the camera pans back from the ship through the battle and up into the sky above the clouds where the lights and sounds of artillery still vibrate against the backdrop of a full moon -before fading to black. Only here does Greyhound really achieve the scale that it’s going for, and communicates a tangible, painful feeling of war. I really wish more of the movie could have done that. I wish it could have been more visually interesting or told its story in a richer way. In the end it’s ultimately about as exciting as a History Channel special, which is where its’ audience is and nowhere else.
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