![]() They work well together, without a doubt. But, of course, it is still very much Hanks in each case conducting a poignantly/hilariously long-range relationship with Meg Ryan and jointly becoming the nation’s sweethearts. In SiS, Hanks is still in his big-haired younger-man mode, but by YGM, he is older with smaller hair. Maybe it is wrong to bracket these together, at least partly because Sleepless in Seattle is appreciably better: lighter of touch, lighter in heart. Sleepless in Seattle (1993) / You’ve Got Mail (1998) In fact, most people will assume that Disney was naturally like Tom Hanks. As ever, Hanks is a genius at embodying pure likability and his Disney has to be a nice guy (there is no question of mentioning the darker sides to Disney’s personality). He is the kindly, persistent movie impresario persuading Emma Thompson’s cantankerous author PL Travers into letting him do a film version of her creation Mary Poppins. Here he is playing Walt Disney really, no other casting was possible. In his senior years, Hanks has a new mastery of playing iconic real-life figures who are part of the US’s pop-cultural landscape. ![]() But there is something a bit silly about this with anyone less seductive than Hanks, it would have sunk. Robert Zemeckis’s film, with Hanks as the FedEx employee who is marooned on a desert island, is taken very seriously by Hanks fans the initial “crash” scene is certainly a corker, and Hanks is also a likable castaway with his tattered trousers and straggly beard, capering with self-congratulatory delight when he makes fire for the first time. Photograph: Cinetext Bildarchiv/Allstar/DreamWorks 15. As so often in Hanks’s CV, his mojo would work better as the kindly authority figure. Stanley Tucci plays the flustered immigration officer who has to deal with him. But here he is giving us an outrageous Ryussh-yun ick-syent as a wacky innocent from a fictional ex-Soviet state who has to live hobo-ishly in New York’s JFK airport terminal building when a coup back home renders him stateless. Hanks is not like Meryl Streep: accents are not his thing. ![]() He brings natural charisma and presence, but the part-sentimental-part-cynical vibe feels wrong. Hanks is the 80s Reagan-era congressman Wilson who masterminded the covert war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. He is playing something of a cynical slimeball in this true-life political drama from the screenwriter Aaron Sorkin and the director Mike Nichols. Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)Īgain, it is weird here to see Hanks play someone who is not the good guy. There is joint relatability and some inter-species chemistry, it has to be admitted, and this film played an important part in establishing Hanks’s brand identity. Hanks plays a cop called Turner, who has to take care of a big, sloppy lovable dog called Hooch who is the only witness to his owner’s murder. Playing opposite a big adorable dog is something only an adorable actor can do. While DiCaprio fakes being a lawyer or an airline pilot, Hanks is the authentic authority figure, who seems to have a sneaking admiration for DiCaprio’s ingenious illegal hi-jinks. Hanks is the cool counterweight to a young Leonardo DiCaprio here he plays the stolid, even-tempered FBI man on the trail of DiCaprio’s notorious teenage conman in this stranger-than-fiction true story. Not a bad role for Hanks, but it doesn’t quite come to life. Sully (2016)Ĭlint Eastwood directed Hanks in this true-life hagiopic about the heroic airline pilot Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III who, with staggering coolness under pressure, landed his damaged US Airways Flight 1549 on New York’s Hudson river and got all 155 passengers and crew off unscathed, only later to suffer an investigation from the contemptible pen-pushers and corporate bean-counters. A high-minded oddity on his CV.Īaron Eckhart and Tom Hanks in Sully. He plays a mob hitman in 1930s Chicago who, with his small son in tow, is going to track down the guys who killed most of his family. Road to Perdition (2002)Ī darker role for Hanks notable, although it doesn’t really play to his strengths. Maybe it would have worked better if he was the straightahead good guy whose innocent pastimes were misinterpreted. The ’Burbs (1989)Ī nosy suburbanite obsessed with his neighbours’ supposed dirty dealings? That’s the role here with which Hanks does his best. ![]() Hanks is the dashing Harvard symbologist Dr Robert Langdon, who deciphers occult signs in Renaissance artworks about Jesus in these clunky adaptations of the bestsellers by Dan Brown (whose books had specified that the hero resembled Harrison Ford). The Da Vinci Code (2006) / Angels & Demons (2009) Hanks has a cameo as a dead Elvis Presley impersonator here ironic, as he got Covid-19 while on location in Australia filming Baz Luhmann’s Elvis biopic, in which he was due to play Presley’s manager, Colonel Tom Parker.
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