Tom Hanks hits the road with his robot and his dog in his new film Finch, streaming on Apple TV+.
Tom Hanks hits the road with his robot and his dog in his new film Finch, streaming on Apple TV+.
Opinion by Karl Puschmann
Karl Puschmann is Culture and entertainment writer for the New Zealand Herald. His fascination lies in finding out what drives and inspires creative people.
Post-apocalyptic films and feel-good vibes don't often go together for good reason. There's just not a whole lot of joy to be found in a scenario where the world is a dusty wasteland and people are killing each other over an old can of beans.
This makes Tom Hanks'new film a bit of an odd duck. Streaming from today on Apple TV+, Finch is a likeable and heartwarming road-trip movie set amongst the horrors of a desolate and supremely inhospitable future that's seen most of humanity wiped out.
Feeling those warm fuzzies yet? Don't worry, by the end of its almost two-hour-long running time, you will.
And not just because Hanks deploys the full force of his natural charm and likeable everyman relatability to get you onside with his affable character, the robotics engineer Finch Weinberg - although that certainly helps - but because the film fires a double-barrel shotgun blast of cute directly at the screen.
The robot comes alive in a scene from Tom Hanks' new film Finch.
These two adorable bullets take the form of a cuddly little dog and a naive android who views the world with child-like wonder. Add a musical score that seizes every opportunity to soak a scene in syrupy strings and you've got everything needed to warm the coldest of hearts. Finch unashamedly and unapologetically sets out to wrench every ounce of emotion it can out of the viewer.
This brute-force approach is somewhat necessary. The movie's beats, its message and its heart are all things you've seen before. It unfolds exactly how you expect. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth your time.
Set roughly 15 years in the future a catastrophic solar flare has flamed through the ozone layer and burnt most of the world to a crisp. Finch was a rare survivor and now lives a solitary life in his former workplace, the robotics factory. He spends his day in a protective suit scavenging shops for food and his evenings holed up listening to Dean Martin while tinkering with his new project; an android to care for his dog Goodyear after he dies.
Man's best friend riding shotgun in Tom Hanks' new film Finch.
Which, unfortunately, is going to be sooner rather than later due to his exposure to harsh radiation. Finch's timeline is further cut short when a freak weather occurrence forces him to flee not just the factory but also the whole city. He packs his dog, his robot (who will later select the name Jeff) and the unlikely trio hit the road in Finch's heavily modified campervan in search of safety.
These travels are the guts of the movie as Jeff learns how to be a real boy, Finch learns the value of companionship and the dog learns that perhaps androids ain't so bad after all.
Awww.
Yes, it's a bit corny. But it's also very watchable thanks to a couple of things. Firstly, and most obviously, there's Hanks' performance. I mean, the dude was nominated for an Academy Award after acting alongside a volleyball so pitch him an acting job with a puppy dog and a doe-eyed robot and he's gonna knock it straight out of the park.
Tom Hanks and his prototype android Dewey in Finch.
Secondly, Finch has incredibly high production values. Much higher than the standard straight-to-streaming movies we've all been watching during lockdown. It's true cinema quality because it was originally supposed to have a theatrical release. But when the world went into its various lockdowns last year, the movie was sold to Apple.
This high quality is apparent right from its stunning - if clichéd - opening windswept shot of a toppled-over shopping cart buried amongst the debris of its post-apocalyptic world. While the android Jeff is superbly animated, looking incredibly real and physical for the most part, it's the movie's broken world that really impresses.
Finch (Tom Hanks) and his android Jeff enjoy the post-apocalyptic view in Finch. Streaming on Apple TV+.
While the disaster in the film is caused by a solar flare, it's difficult to not see it as anything other than a stark warning about the calamitous effects of climate change. Aside from one tense set-piece where Jeff inadvertently leads them into a trap that sees the trio pursued by bandits, the movie's main antagonist is the weather.
There's sudden tornadoes, storm fronts that move haphazardly and occasionally unite to devastating effect, scorched earth that's bereft of crops or greenery and no ozone meaning exposure to broad daylight will instantly leave people sizzling like a burnt sausage.
Having the movie's frightening environment explained away by a "solar flare" feels like a truly missed opportunity. It lets us off the hook and it really shouldn't have. Had the disaster been the very real threat of climate change the movie would have had a much deeper level of depth and poignancy knowing that unless we change things, it's really us who are responsible for the tearjerking final scenes.
Finch is a film all about people learning, so it's a shame it didn't take the opportunity to really teach us something.
