In the not too distant future, a massive solar flare destroys the earth's protective ozone layer resulting in the obliteration of crops and livestock. The temperature is an average 150 degrees outside, the ultraviolet radiation is deadly, and the planet, now a post-apocalyptic wasteland, is largely uninhabitable. Finch Weinberg (Tom Hanks) and his dog Goodyear are two of the survivors. Finch is a robotics engineer and uses parts from his company's St. Louis laboratory to build an assistant rover, Dewey, to assist him as he scavenges for any food or resources he can find.
Finch reads books on post-apocalyptic survival to get by and the effects of UV radiation to understand his quickly approaching fate. He builds a robot who's prime directive is to protect the dog. The internet is no longer available, so he scans the contents of carefully selected books to give this robot a base wealth of knowledge. But his timetable is unexpectedly accelerated with an approaching electrical storm due to hit the next day and last for 40 days. Finch scrambles to get the robot functional enough to flee for a safer destination. They have no idea what or who they might encounter along the way, but they'll do it together as the robot learns to think, feel, and communicate . . . even with Goodyear.
While the Covid-19 Pandemic makes it feel like it's been a while since we've seen Hanks in a leading role, he's actually been keeping quite busy. Finch is his fifth feature film in the last three years. His other works have been the fourth Toy Story installment, the role of Fred Rogers in the dark and touching A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, a naval Captain in Greyhound, and a messenger of hope and current events in News of the World.
Finch looked like it could be a possible mix of Cast Away (one of Hanks' previous films about a man stranded for years on a deserted island) and Pinocchio (the next in a trend of Disney live-action remakes of animated classics in which Hanks will play Geppetto, a toy maker who builds a wooden boy companion who comes to life). On his deserted island, Hanks was kept company only by a volleyball he named Wilson, the brand of the volleyball. In Finch, at least he has a dog that's actually alive and he builds a robot with whom he is able to communicate. Food, shelter and other necessities were scarce on the island. While food and water are in short supply in Finch, but he has more options for material resources, travel, and shelter. And the environment on the island was much more hospitable than in Finch where he can be immediately severely burned from simply exposing his skin to direct sunlight.
It's unclear from the preview what the end-game is in Finch. The impending storm forces Finch and his band to flee their shelter in St. Louis. Using a map he has been using to keep track of areas he has surveyed and scavenged, Finch decides to head west to San Francisco hoping there might be more resources, but hopefully no people.
Finch was directed by Miguel Sapochnik. Who? is exactly the right response to that. This appears to be one of the few full-length feature films Sapochnik has directed as his repertoire is mostly populated with TV series. Now, the shows he has directed have been very high caliber: Game of Thrones and True Detective, for example. But, it still didn't give us more clues as to what we can expect from Finch as would say a director like Stephen Spielberg, Tim Burton, or Martin Scorsese. What we got was not noteworthy.
So, honestly, my main motivation to watch this movie was purely Tom Hanks in the leading role. I tepidly gave Finch a prediction of 3.5 Stars. I am lowering that rating to 2.5 stars. Hanks was fine. I really think it was the script overall that was lacking in substance. In Cast Away, Hanks developed such a relationship with the volleyball Wilson that we were brought to tears when they were ultimately separated. That relationship was not replicated in this movie with Goodyear the dog, Dewey the scavenger rover, or the robot protector they eventually named Jeff. And there were so many opportunities to do so. Immediately upon having his power switch activated, Jeff has a personality, but we have no idea where he got that personality, his mannerisms, his cadence, and it never really develops from that point during the movie. Unfortunately, he and Finch don't get to spend much time together for teaching moments as they evacuate less than a day later.
There were so many moments where we could have seen the understanding and capacity for human thought in Jeff that just weren't there in the movie. Instead, Jeff is somewhat of a bumbling, often annoying robot who inexplicably has a very distinct and developed personality of his own. His cadence seems to be fashioned after the Borat character of Sacha Baron Cohen. There were so many moments where Jeff could have slowly broken down the walls of distrust between he and the dog Goodyear. Those moments are few and far between. There were missed opportunities for Finch to have us buy into his relationship with Goodyear that ultimately comes down to a touching story of how they came to find each other. And there were opportunities missed to show the importance of Dewey to Finch making a scene in which Jeff believes he is learning to do the right thing ends up resulting in tragedy that could have been very moving, just fall flat. The music during that scene didn't help either.
Overall, Hanks was fine. It wasn't his best work, but I think he was limited by a mediocre script. I wasn't expecting much going into the movie, but Finch ultimately delivered even less. It was flat and mostly emotionless which is a shame since it stars one of the masters of character and story-telling. It wouldn't be worth paying full-price in the theatres, I might watch it again on a rainy day for free with absolutely nothing else to do, but this won't find a home in my permanent collection. So, what movie will be on my mind next? We shall see.
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