Finch

Nov 25

This is not, as many peers and people have said, the Chappie of Tom Hanks’ career. It is his Wall-E. He finds himself isolated and alone on a planet without hope. Audiences at home may not entirely relish the thought, but they are closer to Finch than they think. Shouting into the void of environmental awareness and scrutiny, Finch tries to envision a future where all that remains is robots, Oscar winners, and the modern connection between man and machine. Miguel Sapochnik marks his second outing in the directing chair with a tepid, water-treading feature that does little to push the boundaries of the post-apocalyptic feature.

What more can be done with this genre? Post-apocalyptic movies are of three categories: bright and hopeful, odd and disorienting, or doomed and damned. What Finch fails to grasp is that blurring all six of those feelings into one another is a messy mistake. Earnest it may be, it is hard to escape the notions of emotionally poor, manipulative structure. This is no Hardware, despite the dusty deserts and robots of ominous intent and untrustworthiness, it is no better than that cult classic horror. Much of that comes from Sapochnik instigating a colour scheme reminiscent of The Martian. But beyond the orange tinge and fight for survival, the pieces are tonally different. Finch tries to explore the isolation and hard-fought battle for survival but never amounts to more than being another vehicle for Hanks.

That is better than nothing, but Finch would benefit more from the exploration of something new and inspired, rather than the same few tones of fear and anguish in the isolated aisles of a shopping mall. The stuttering soundtrack cranks up Don McLean, and out American Pie goes. It is not particularly inspired. Finch is reliant on the keynotes of a culture far away from the reality this eponymous character finds himself in. That is all Finch can offer – a blast from the past. Even its leading man is a tokenism of the 1990s. He is the glue that holds this ever-so-slightly convincing science-fiction feature together, but all he has to do is grunt, groan, and cry his way through a fairly uninspired script. This is Hanks’ The Midnight Sky, but at least he isn’t completely useless as George Clooney was.

Finch knows how to manipulate its audience into feeling sorry for its leading man. It is not hard to do, considering Hanks has been at the heart of lovable roles for most of his career. This is no different to his inspired work on Cast Away, Forrest Gump, or Toy Story. The likeable lead is still intact. He can do no wrong or no harm to anything or anyone. He looks after a dog and a robot dog, living life in solitude away from the apocalypse outside. What, then, does he offer differently from the rest of the genre? Very little. That is the drawback Finch is never quite sure how to deal with. How do they take this genre to the next level? It will take more than Hanks in a Halley’s Comet shirt to deal with that. But until then, Finch is a fine enough effort from Sapochnik and company.