Greyhound (2020 US) Based on the WWII novel The Good Shepard. Tom Hanks stars as a Navy Captain in charge of an allied destroyer group escorting cargo ships through an area of the Atlantic without air support. Again, don’t travel with Tom Hanks. I really liked this one even though war films are not really my jam. Here is why? I like to call this type of film “procedural”. Kind of like the Law Enforcement procedural shows such as CSI where they dig pretty deep into the nuts and bolts of how. So this had a lot of military speak which I didn’t feel was too overwhelming mainly because the director could show the result of said military speak without getting bogged down in exposition . Why I liked it was that it had a story to tell and it stuck with it. The goal was to get to the cover of air support while not getting blown out of the water by German U-Boats. Not a lot of overly dramatic scenes cuz goddamit this is the big one and they had shit to do. Tom Hanks didn’t have beef with the Captain of another destroyer because he was his wife’s ex. No spies on board to muck things up. I like the simpler story trend I’m seeing in Hollywood and I think audiences like it too. John Wick was a runaway hit. The story? “you killed my dog. Now you die”. Very straight forward and without a lot of side plots you can really drill down on the dying part. Same with Greyhound. Hanks who adapted the screenplay, really dug deep into “this is how we did it”. I loved how it was shot on the USS Kidd in Louisiana and external shots from a Canadian destroyer running around Nova Scotia. I’m sure the historical societies involved loooved that. And of course Tom Hanks is amazing. You can see that the stress of being hunted by U boats is getting to him but it’s subtle with no hint of reluctance. I have hated the reluctant hero trope since the get go. So all in all a break from the Hollywood trope machine. Find this on Apple TV or for rent on most streaming.
Oh and ladies if you watch this watch it with a dude. Many of them can give you really interesting points of interest. My hubs explained to me why one of the guys helmets was so big. It was not an error with costumes, it was a special helmet they used in WWII that had radio equipment in it. He was the radio man. Fun little tidbit.