Greyhound - Tom Hanks vs. U-Boats

Your answer kind of surprises me. I hear it’s just full of scenes with seamen being shaken and tossed all over the damned place.

Yeah, but there is only one brief scene with where a sailor is visibly injured with blood. The rest is all off screen or implied as boats are blown up/sunk.

I mean its still a war movie, at the end of the day, with all that entails as far as required audience maturity, but it’s very light on the graphical nature of it’s depiction of casualties.

I’ll also echo Tom’s reacation. While the action sequences generally held my attention, I found the movie on the whole quite medicore and unconvincing. There is barely any characterisation and what’s there is pretty lmited to Tom Hanks and not particularly deep.

Also keen to hear peoples perception of the naval tactics on display as it did not seem all that realistic to me, but I am not a naval buff.

tenor

I enjoyed it. Yeah, there isn’t any depth and the battles get a bit silly, but it was an entertaining movie. It mainly reminded me of my old Aces of the Deep or Silent Service days trying to sink some cargo ships in the early days of the war. Lots of action and sinking ships. I thought it captured that and the technology quite well. Most of the crew acting is really weak, and the fragile hero trope does get old though. Don’t go into it looking for Das Boot, but it’s fun for what it is.

I thought it looked great as well. Pretty bland seeing as it’s all set at sea with no land and mostly far off shots of ships, but it looked good and the surround sound was great. Lots of explosions and sound effects that made it a neat experience.

I think I heard the F word once. Only one scene where it was blatantly obvious someone got badly hurt, but no real blood. Deaths weren’t shown, just a short funeral. Very minimal shots of people in the ocean, after a ship was sunk. It’s perfectly fine for kids, but I am not sure kids would enjoy it.

Is there any mention of when this supposedly takes place? I would guess that it’s fairly soon after the US entered the war, so 1942? Were there already a lot of troop transports headed to the UK in that timeframe?

BTW, what was up with the helmet one of the guys on the deck was wearing, the one that looked a bit like Rick Moranis’ in Spaceballs? Anyone know what that’s about?

Hanks says '42 on the Carlin podcast. Not a lot of troop transports heading to the UK but a whole lot of everything else the UK needed for the war and to keep it’s population fed.

Not sure about the helmet thing haven’t seen the film…

Truly risible stuff. From the angle torpedoes are fired to the Allies having no idea about decoys to the captain having to have stuff explained to him for the audience’s benefit to the German U-boats constantly popping up out of the water like they’re playing peek-a-boo to the subs drawing up alongside the destroyers so close that the destroyer’s guns can deflect low enough to target them to Star Wars stormtrooper levels of firing accuracy to Tom Hanks having to be reminded how many depth charges they have left. It’s all Hollywood rubbish, which doesn’t have to be a problem, but the since the Hollywood action is so poorly done, all that’s left is the rubbish.

I mean, there’s a scene where the destroyer almost collides with a merchant ship, and while I’m sure there was a lot of confusion maneuvering among the fleet formation, the destroyer would have had lookout to let them know well in advance, “uh, guys, we’re on a collision course with a much slower and bigger ship, we need to adjust course”. Instead, it’s like “whaaa, where did that thing come from, now we have to have a dramatic can-the-ship-turn-tightly-enough nail-biter sequence.”

And then promptly apologized for! It’s a PG-13 movie, so it uses it’s one F-bomb to make it clear that F-bombs are NOT cool.

The opening title card specifies it’s 1942.

Right? Why did he get the special helmet? He even had a kind of Rick Moranis hangdog look.

-Tom

I have not seen the movie, but I assume it’s one of these. Although from the way Tom described the movie, I’m surprised that this wasn’t explained in glaringly obvious dialogue.

CAPT HANKS: Sailor, why are you wearing that goofy-looking hat?

SEAMAN BEAUMONT: Sir! It’s a Mark 2 Talker Helmet designed to cover my radio headphones, sir!

CAPT HANKS: Very good, sailor. Carry on!

SEAMAN BEAUMONT: Sir, behind you!

[CAPT HANKS turns to see a German U-boat sneaking up on him. He punches the submarine.]

Haven’t seen the film yet, however there are some things to be aware of in the history…

Based on a book by CS Forrester (who knew his s**t about naval warfare)
Submarines regularly attacked convoys from the surface, and especially at night
Popping up and down to play peek a boo is not however accurate historically!

Hanks explains in the Carlin podcast that in the book the Captain is very inexperienced, he’s a lifer Navy guy from the '20’s who has gone nowhere in his career to date (Hanks explains that his achievement basically consisted of not being thrown out to date)

Convoy collisions were not unknown in the early days of the war, so it’s not that much of a stretch…

This got a chuckle out of me.

Were those not typically unguarded convoys, though?

Early in the war, no. Everything changed by 1945 though, and that would have been suicide. Early in the war torpedos really sucked, but so did radar. Surface, go for a quick few blasts and then go below as the escorts came in. At night, obviously.

1943, guess your thumb slipped. May 1943 in particular.

This is really disappointing. Tom Hanks in a WWII should be good damn it. Anybody seen it and liked it?

Hi. See above.

I read your comments as being pretty silly movie but enjoyable, not exactly high praise.

How powerful is this f-bomb though? Will it sink a battleship?

I did enjoy it though, with the caveat that it is a very light movie. I think if you go into it knowing what to expect, it’s a fun watch. It was only an hour and half as well, so it’s not a huge time sink. I wouldn’t advise anyone to pay for Apple TV+ for it, but if you have the free year and want a light action movie, I’ld recommend it to your average person.

It also was very nostalgic for me though. As silly as it is, I loved Aces of the Deep and Silent Service 2 back in the day, and it very much gave me a feeling of playing those games again. “Ohh, that destroyer is way off course, let’s surface and do some shooting!”, only to find out one of the other escorts is a lot closer than you thought and trying to get away at 3 knots, is painful. Parts of the movie gave me that feeling again, even if it was from the other side.

Of course now I really want to go watch Das Boot tonight. Anyone who hasn’t see that (probably no one here), should just go watch that if they have 4 hours to spare.

Make sure you watch the director’s cut of Das Boot. It’s long but worth it. Also, season 1 of the Das Boot series is VERY good. I haven’t seen season 2 yet.