Greyhound Review: 6 Ups & 3 Downs

The current global predicament has certainly allowed smaller movies to flourish on the VOD stage, but surely nobody expected that they'd end up watching a $50 million Tom Hanks-starring war film from the comfort of their own home, courtesy of Apple TV+?

Acquired from Sony earlier this year for a princely sum, Greyhound marks another experimental VOD release of a major Hollywood movie, even if the end result makes it somewhat easy to see why Sony opted to sell it off rather than wait out the present situation.

Greyhound isn't quite the bombastic WWII action film you might've been expecting from the trailers, but far more of a contained and restrained mini-epic focused more on the human cost of war.

Hanks, who also wrote the script, keeps things on a even keel throughout as a naval Captain desperately trying to protect his ship from an incoming German U-boat assault.

Even if it sometimes feels a little too light for its own good, one thing's for sure: everyone's dad is going to love it...

Downs...

3. The Non-Existent Character Development

The most obvious ding against Greyhound from the outset is that, between its short runtime of 91 minutes and singular focus on a tense central scenario, there isn't much space for the central characters to be developed at all.

Though we learn just enough about Hanks' Captain Ernest Krause, the rest of Greyhound's crew aren't much more than thin sketches, despite the solid efforts of the cast.

Granted, their mere existence in a terrifying scenario is enough for them to win our sympathy, but even so, there are times where it feels like the ruthless commitment to tension and action detracts from the human element.

It's not a deal-breaker, but it does mean that you'll leave the movie knowing virtually nothing about the imperiled young men - and you likely won't remember any of their names, either.