Greyhound, Apple+
Tom Hanks stars as a Captain of a US WWII destroyer with the call sign of Greyhound. It is his first time in command. He is in charge of a military escort of a convoy of Troop and civilian ships crossing the Atlantic. The ships cross under the cover of American aircraft initially and under British aircraft eventually, but in between there is a time where they are under neither and Nazi “wolf packs” of subs take advantage of that.
Initially Hanks shows himself to be an able commander by intuiting the moves of a Nazi sub trying to slip under him, but he is often faced with tough decisions that have not clear answer, like deciding whether to pick up survivors or protect ships under attack. Tom Hanks’s character stays awake during the four days of attack and never finds time for a meal, a device showing the intensity in unrelenting nature of the attacks.
If you enjoy this genre and/or Tom Hanks, you will enjoy this movie. It’s not spectacular, but it’s certainly entertaining and engaging.
(You also get the bonus of a short and utterly meaningless, in my view, cameo of Elizabeth Shue. I guess it was thrown into humanize Hanks and not make the movie action from start to finish but I’d rather have spent the screen time giving a little more development to the Nazi commander. It would make their chess match against each other more interesting.)
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