Josh Reviews Finch
The film Finch is set some time in the future. A massive solar flare, combined with other environmental catastrophes, has mostly wiped out mankind. Tom Hanks plays Finch, an engineer who has survived with his dog Goodyear by living mostly in the sheltered, underground lab of the company where he used to work. But after years of his solitary existence, Finch is forced to leave his long-term shelter when he realizes that a coming super-storm will destroy everything around him. And so Finch and Goodyear set off, heading towards San Francisco. They’re joined by one more traveler: the robot that Finch has been working on and activated early when forced to flee the coming super-storm.
I really wanted to like this movie, and indeed, there is much to enjoy. But it doesn’t altogether work.
Tom Hanks is, as always, tremendous. Mr. Hanks is basically the only human being seen on-screen for the entire film. And yet, Mr. Hanks effortlessly carries the movie on his shoulders. One of Mr. Hanks’ many skills is the believability he brings to all of his roles. That serves him well here, as Mr. Hanks’ naturalism helps make the sci-fi setting believable. And just as it was Mr. Hanks’ acting talent that made audiences invest in a blood-splattered volleyball named Wilson (in the 2000 film Cast Away), so too does Mr. Hanks do terrific work here selling the reality of the robot, who eventually takes the name Jeff, with whom his character is traveling and conversing (not to mention Mr. Hanks’ character’s interactions with his dog Goodyear and another dog-type robot that Finch has built). This is a terrific acting performance, and Mr. Hanks’ innate watchability helped carry me through the film even during some of the rough patches.
I think the main problem with the film is the uneven tone. This film deals with some heavy subject matter (both the destruction of human civilization as well as the reality of Finch’s eventual mortality), and there are some scary/tense sequences in which Finch and his non-human traveling companions encounter dangers on the post-apocalyptic road. And yet for the most part, the film seems to be aiming for a tone of genial comedy. The odd-couple pairing between Finch and his robot Jeff is mostly meant to be amusing. But the patches of humor (or what was intended to be humor) kept bumping up, for me, quite incongruously with the moments of seriousness or tension. In a film that works, humor can be used to make a tense or sad story bearable. But here it felt like the filmmakers didn’t quite have a handle on the tone of the story being told, and the two sides of the film’s story (the serious and the comedic) clashed with one another, in my opinion.
It’s a shame because, despite all that, in the film’s final moments it reached an emotional level that surprised me! I was genuinely moved by the film’s ending. I wish the hour and a half that came before those final sequences had been more consistently engaging.
Caleb Landry Jones (X-Men: First Class, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) voiced and did motion-capture for the robot, Jeff. It’s a strong performance, and the visual effects that brought Jeff to life are terrific. The character feels fully integrated into the scenes with Tom Hanks, and Jeff’s movements are 100% convincing and believable. I particularly enjoyed the subtle way in which Jeff’s movements and vocalizations became more human as the film progressed. That was very well done. (In the early scenes with Jeff, I was surprised that they went with such a generic voice for the robot; but by the end of the film I understood what the filmmakers were doing.)
The film was directed by Miguel Sapochnik, one of the best and most important directors on Game of Thrones. (Mr. Sapochnik directed “Hardhome”, “The Battle of the Bastards”, and “The Winds of Winter”.) Mr. Sapochnik’s eye for finding the beauty in violent or otherwise chaotic settings is in strong evidence in the film. And his skill with working with visual effects clearly helped with the challenge of realizing Jeff in a believable way. At the same time, I was hoping for a stronger overall film with Mr. Sapochnik at the helm.
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