Finch Review: 6 Ups & 4 Downs
Tom Hanks anchors a modestly enjoyable post-apocalyptic drama.
Arriving on a surprisingly muted wave of hype this week is Finch, a big-budget post-apocalyptic sci-fi drama starring Tom freakin' Hanks as the titular engineer, one of the scarce few human survivors of a solar catastrophe which has rendered the surface of the Earth an arid, inhospitable wasteland.
He teams up with his canine pal Goodyear and robot companion Jeff (Caleb Landry Jones) to make a dangerous trip to California and avoid an impending 40-day "superstorm."
Despite its fairly low-key release on Apple TV+ - who bought the film from Universal earlier this year - Finch is a modestly entertaining yarn from Game of Thrones director Miguel Sapochnik, albeit one that can't always reconcile its human drama with the demands of a more heightened genre film.
Hanks, one of the most reliable actors there ever has been, acquits himself with great skill here as expected, which combined with the impressively slick production values ensures Finch should play well across a broad spectrum of viewers.
If you haven't seen the likes of Ted Lasso and Mythic Quest yet, you've got no excuse not to subscribe to Apple TV+ for a month and binge them alongside this solidly enjoyable slice of well-made, brilliantly acted cinema.
It's not going to win Oscars, but it splits the difference shrewdly between prestige cinema and blockbuster junk...