I grew up watching a lot of westerns and war movies with my dad. He may not have had the keenest eye for weeding out good movies from bad ones, but his appreciation for the oft-misunderstood genres transcended critical analysis. He never felt the need to articulate much past surface-level praise (or scorn), and likely missed any political or cultural subtext, but I’ve realized over the years that I’ve almost always agreed with his instincts when it came to genre films. He knew what he liked and that was good enough for him, and as it turned out, it was usually good enough for me too. My dad lost his long battle with cancer last month, so I never got the chance to recommend Aaron Schneider’s Greyhound to him, but I can say with every confidence that he would have enjoyed the hell out of it.
Tom Hanks plays Commander Ernest Krause, a Naval officer on his first wartime crossing of the Atlantic, just after the U.S. officially joined the fight in 1942. His task is simple: lead a supply convoy to Liverpool for the war effort in Europe. The problem is that the North Atlantic waters are teeming with German U-boats, and trouble starts shortly after the group of three dozen ships hits the “black pit” – a stretch of ocean too far from either coast to supply air support. The battle comes in fits and waves as the nearly unseen enemy picks off the convoy one ship at a time, leaving those tasked with protecting it to sink deeper into discouragement.
There aren’t many great movies about World War II naval battles, and none that I can think of that captures its action completely from the deck of a destroyer (and fewer still that do so without resorting to extreme sentimentalism). While Greyhound remains intense and action-packed, it’s battle sequences are grounded in the intricacies of life on board a battleship, and not idealized heroics. Everyone on board the USS Keeling (nicknamed “Greyhound”) has a job to do, and they are expected to do it with efficiency and professionalism. This is a film less about who its characters are, and more about how they pull through their deadly encounter.
By focusing on the procedural aspects over defined character development, Greyhound very nearly negates the need for traditional arcs. The intensity of its conflict forces focus away from the individual and onto the greater whole, thus creating a figurative mind and body working together in unison towards a common goal (in this case, surviving a U-Boat attack). We’ve grown accustomed to seeing Tom Hanks deliver his tried-and-true brand of stoic resolve, and Greyhound is no different (admittedly, he does do an awful lot of staring out of windows at the rough sea beyond), but, aside from a thrown-together opening bit about a “gal back home,” we aren’t given anything to sink our teeth into about Krause other than his utter professionalism and religious conviction. And you know what? That’s fine. Why shoehorn in expected and overused schmaltz when the real excitement is out there on the water (or under it)? Eliminating rote melodrama from the equation allows Greyhound to showcase what we all came to see: A badass battle at sea!
Every single time I’ve ever watched a movie with my dad that has anything to do with a submarine (or World War II, or the Navy, for that matter), he has always asked me the same question: “Have you ever seen Das Boot?” After I inform him for the 100th time that, yes, I have seen Das Boot, he adds, “It’d be better if it wasn’t in German.” Well, this one’s not in German, so I guess it has that going for it too.
Rest easy, Dad.
James is a writer, skateboarder, record collector, wrestling nerd, and tabletop gamer living with his family in Asheville, North Carolina. He is a member of the Southeastern Film Critics Association, the North Carolina Film Critics Association, and contributes to The Daily Orca, Razorcake Magazine, Mountain Xpress, and Asheville Movies.