Hanks, movie-land ambassador to America, takes another trip
The film, which premieres this week at the Tribeca Film Festival and opens in theaters Friday, is Tom Tykwer's adaptation of Dave Eggers' novel in which Hanks plays a struggling middle-aged American businessman who travels to the Saudi Arabian desert to pitch the king on an IT system for a new complex being built.
For Hanks, it's another stamp in a movie passport that includes Cold War-era Russia ("Bridge of Spies"), the dangerous waters off the coast of Somalia ("Captain Phillips") and a tiny South Pacific island ("Cast Away").
With basic decency and good-humored candor, he has refracted American triumph ("Apollo 13") and tragedy (perishing in the Twin Towers in "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close").
Paul Greengrass' docudrama of a Maersk cargo ship taken by Somali pirates may have taken some liberty with the details of the 2009 kidnapping and Navy Seal rescue.
The brash, can-do Wilson leads a program to support the Afghan mujahideen in the Soviet-Afghan War, only to watch the U.S. fatefully withdraw once the Russians exited.
What more does a humble FedEx employee need on a desert island than a friendly volley ball and an unbreakable spirit?
On the timeline of Hanks' decorated Americans, none matches Captain John Miller — a small-town Pennsylvania schoolteacher who taught English composition before WWII — for courage.