During the Battle of the Atlantic in World War II, Allied convoys carried desperately needed supplies and troops from U.S. ports to Britain. Marauding packs of German submarines exacted a terrible toll, yet most cargo ships got through, accompanied by destroyers and other light vessels that took on the deadly U-boats. In “Greyhound,” streaming on Apple TV+, Tom Hanks is Cmdr. Ernest Krause, a U.S. Navy destroyer captain leading a convoy across the North Atlantic soon after America entered the war; it’s his first command and his first Atlantic crossing. The film is impressive visually, though less so on TV screens than it might have been on the theater screens it was made for, and repetitive though still absorbing dramatically, a string of action vignettes separated by tense interludes. But parts of the drama play out on its star’s face, and they’re the best parts, because there’s no one better at portraying a good man’s self-doubts and a frightened man’s courage.
The screenplay was adapted by Mr. Hanks from “The Good Shepherd,” a 1955 novel by C.S. Forester; “greyhound” is the radio call sign of Krause’s ship, the USS Keeling. In Hollywood during the war, or in its aftermath, a production like this would have flaunted its genre conventions, couched its heroism in larger-than-life characters. The watchword here is emotional restraint—Ernie Krause is precisely life-size—within a story that’s amplified by strong graphics and digital effects. (Elisabeth Shue plays the love of Krause’s life in a cameo-size appearance.)
The most dangerous stretches of the crossing take place in the so-called Black Pit, the area of the North Atlantic where convoys are beyond the range of air cover. The film’s vision of all the ships beset by heaving winter seas, as well as the submarine wolf pack they conceal, could pass for a Turner seascape in near-black-and-white. It’s not surprising that the director, Aaron Schneider, has spent most of his filmmaking career as a cinematographer. (The production was designed by David Crank and photographed by Shelly Johnson.) Telling details heighten the tension: frozen windshield wipers that must be fixed so the captain can see from the bridge; a near-collision with a freighter in the dark; blips on the scopes of relatively primitive and finicky radars and sonars; a submarine’s sudden apparition; the orange aura of distant freighters in terminal distress.
(Two companion pieces for “Greyhound” are the 1981 “Das Boot,” a peerlessly claustrophobic study of life aboard a German U-boat, and “The Cruel Sea,” the splendid English drama from 1953 in which a world of horror and grief registers on the face of Jack Hawkins’s Ericson, the captain of the convoy escort HMS Compass Rose, as he watches his beloved corvette sink beneath the waves.)
Captaincy is nothing new for Mr. Hanks. He played captains in “Saving Private Ryan,” “Captain Phillips,” “Sully” and “Apollo 13,” and will play another one in “News of the World.” The special quality he brings to these roles is humility that tempers the customary notion of a commanding presence, and he does it again in “Greyhound.” Krause isn’t sure he’s equal to the task of shepherding the convoy to still waters at the end of the perilous journey, but he’s a man of faith who takes comfort from the Bible—so was the captain in Forester’s book, though his faith was far from unconditional—and views his enemies with compassion. “Fifty less krauts!” says an exuberant young crewman after the destroyer has sunk a German submarine. “Yes, fifty souls,” the captain replies solemnly.
A producer as well as the star and writer of “Greyhound,” Mr. Hanks was outspoken in a recent interview about what he called the “absolute heartbreak” of seeing the film, conceived and produced for the big screen, end up as a streaming attraction because of the pandemic. Subsequently he expressed gratitude for careful care his film has received from Apple, its new distributor.
Still, he has called attention to a concern shared by many film lovers who suddenly find themselves starved for the sort of spectacles, enhanced by spectacular sound, that can be experienced only in movie theaters. How much are movies diminished by streaming? In some cases, not much at all; intimate dramas, the motion-picture equivalent of literary novellas, can look and sound fine on good home screens. But movie movies, those resonant action adventures, are another story. Even “Greyhound,” a compact production that runs only 91 minutes, suffers from the straitened physicality. Seen at home, its mighty waves may be bounded by furniture or windows. Seen in a theater, they’d suggest a proper ocean. Waiting for wisdom on the future of the big-screen experience, we are all at sea.
Write to Joe Morgenstern at joe.morgenstern@wsj.com
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