Greyhound
War Action / English / 2020
I was intrigued by Tom Hank's
Bridge of Spies, which I never saw, but it turns out he went and wrote a screenplay to an entirely different wartime period piece, this time as a naval captain embattled with enemy submarines. I like Tom Hanks, I'm interested in war history, let's do it.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
"Captain has the conn."
I don't know what it is about ships and trains, but these huge, relatively slow, often claustrophic, and generally archaic forms of transportation are just very interesting settings to a tell a story. The concept of a closed eco-system developing on a moving train as in
Snowpiercer definitely had potential, it's just a shame that movie sucked. In a similar vein, movies like
Hunt for Red October and
Greyhound are interesting because, as in
Dunkirk, the characters are effectively trapped in a relatively fragile metal coffin above or beneath the waves of an ocean that doesn't care about your god, and you have what little fuel, ammunition, morale, and intel to maneuver through hostile territory before meeting Davy Jones.
I read that this movie had "little character", but was brisk with the action, and that is definitely true. About the only character we spend any meaningful time with is Captain Tom Hanks himself, playing the man who refuses to sit or eat until he sees the job safely done.
The job here being the lead military escort of a convey of supplies through submarine-infested waters without valuable air support. True to the premise, the action comes on fast, and like a ship breaking on the waves, it bops with each encounter with enemy vessels. Unlike
Dunkirk, it doesn't dwell for long stretches of time, it doesn't tell an anachronistic story, or try to engage me in dog-eat-dog drama. It's just, someone calls out a contact off the starboard bow AND WE'RE ALL IN BABY, LET'S DO THIS.
Now if I have any grievance with the action, it's going to be that it ultimately amounts to a lot of Tom Hanks running back and forth from opposite sides of the bridge to look out at waves of nothing with only the
hint that a sub may be there. It's still exciting, but it does get little bit tiring, especially at the beginning before the fleet of subs emerge into view. Much of the dialog is communication between the ships protecting the convoy, the sonar guy, Capn' Hanks and his immediate staff. They convey a lot of information very quickly, and if you're unfamiliar with some of the naval lingo, it's easy to lose track of where the subs are purported to be. I appreciated one character's translation of "screws" to "propellers", which helped establish that when the sonar guy said "too many screws" he meant he was getting interference from the sounds of propellers in the vicinity, which inhibited his ability to clearly articulate the sounds of hostiles from friendlies. Other elements like the exact quantity of subs they were detecting was also fuzzy because of this dialog, but a rewatch may clear that up.
I liked the increasingly overt theme of the submarines representing a "wolfpack", trailing and picking off vulnerable members of the herd over time. They really come off as an invisible predator of their own, eternally deadly, because their torpedoes are only barely visible and provide a damningly small amount of time to turn such a big target out of it's line of fire. It's surprising to me that a ship like the Greyhound would even plausibly be able to take on a sub, but maybe I'm just operating by
Advance Wars logic. I'm thinking of these ships like Battleships when I should be thinking of them like Cruisers.
The sound design of this movie was strange, but I also liked it. They have a pumping action-horror soundtrack and the subs are accompanied by what I can only describe as a cross between a prolonged orchestral sting and and a whale sound. It's some awful artificial scream that further makes these ships seem like animals, and I liked the mood that they added, however distracting I imagine their inclusion would be for anyone
actually experienced in naval combat.
The CG was noticeably aggressive in this movie which is a definite strike against it which I wouldn't give to Dunkirk. And that seems to me to be a particularly rough aspect to stumble over considering this is marketed as an "Apple Original Movie", a company which prides itself on the visual fidelity of it's products. The motion blur during panning ocean shots seem to be the worst offender here.
I didn't care for the religiosity of Hanks' character, but it was thankfully brief, and not to crap on Hanks by referring to his character as Hanks, I genuinely do appreciate that every movie I see him in, no matter how recognizable he is, he manages to slip into the role and come off as somebody distinct from Woody from
Toy Story, or Viktor from
The Terminal, or Miller from
Saving Private Ryan. Even if his character isn't wholly fleshed out as in those other movies.
Perhaps the best thing I can say about
Greyhound is it makes me want to read the book it's based on, cause I imagine a lot of the minutae about operating the ship and locating and combating the subs was glossed over for the purposes of a standard runtime.
I really did enjoy this movie and I think the only thing I wish I got more of was the specifics about operating the ship. I imagine it sort of in the vein of
Treasure Island, which, for all of it's adaptations, often obfuscates the worldbuilding that was present in the book and consequently popularized the pirate genre.
I may give this a better rating on a rewatch, but for now I think it deserves a solid
Final Verdict: [Good]
REWATCH UPDATE:
"Very well."
Perhaps the best thing I can say about Greyhound is it makes me want to read the book it's based on,
Well, I have done exactly as I suggested and taken it upon myself to read through the entirety of
The Good Shepherd and am now qualified to speak on it's quality as an adaptation. For the purposes of this rewatch update I will be referring to the book as "TGS".
First things first, I would like to call out this bullshit on the Wikipedia page:
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
The film was relatively faithful to the novel, with two major exceptions. The characters and their names remain basically the same (e.g. Ernie Krause is George Krause), but in the book, Krause is more bitter about his life, as he was divorced from Evelyn.
Originally Posted by Wikipedia
The character of Cleveland is based on a Filipino messmate in the novel who survives. The film invents a scene where a U-boat uses Greyhound's transmitting frequency to broadcast taunting messages over the ship's loudspeakers.
This sounds to me more like
three major exceptions, but I strongly disagree that these are the only major exceptions, let alone the only exceptions.
This is the sort of movie that is
thematically, extremely faithful to it's source material, and it keeps a lot of the minutiae intact, however the
broadstrokes of the story, such the sequence of events and certain elements are shuffled, embellished, or left out entirely.
It reminds me very much of the
Resident Evil 4 remake, which I also played through recently. It seems to take incredible liberties with the structure of the narrative, while retaining many of the little details that might be nitpicked. For my part, I actually thought
Resident Evil 4 was a pretty solid remake, and in much of the same way, I think Greyhound is a solid adaptation.
There are a lot of little changes that don't significantly impact the story; Tom Hanks is Ernie Krause, as opposed to George Krause, he never wears glasses in the movie, though he calls for them once, alluding to the fact that he wears them in the book. There's a ship called the "Southland" which sinks in the movie, but it's one of the straggling ships at the end of the book. They sink 4 u-boats instead of 3, not big stuff.
Apart from this, there are actually quite a few changes that do have a significant impact on the movie. The "Keeling" is renamed "Greyhound", which I just thinks makes for an excellent touch of symbolism.
About halfway through the book, it's revealed that Krause is entirely alone in the world. Evelyn, who is protrayed in the movie as his would-be bride, if not for the war, provides a bittersweet relationship to bookend the start and end of the movie.
In the book, however, Evelyn is Krause's former wife and never appears in the story. Krause is "fitted an retained", a euphemism for being passed up for a promotion, and a phrase that he dwells on endlessly like a personal insult. Evelyn doesn't understand how hard he takes it and there are allusions to Krause losing his absolute shit on her before she reveals she's been cheating on him with a "handsome lawyer".
In the book, this memory is his biggest personal grief and it rears it's ugly head as a manic depression more and more as fatigue sets in. It even capstones the book, as he's finally relieved of duty and goes to bed, he's just overwhelmed by a "black depression".
It's a big downer and it contributes to the incredibly weak ending of the book. The movie thankfully spares us this subplot and inserts a single barely-there cutscene in California for Krause to mention being "fitted and retained" exactly once, and sets up his new command as a relief and Evelyn as sort of reward for him should he survive.
It's also strange because it's precisely because Evelyn cheats on him that he requests a post on the Atlantic to get away from the West Coast. Otherwise, the setting of California really doesn't serve any purpose.
The passing reference to a crewman being incarcerated for fighting in the book is significantly embellished into an entire scene in the movie as a means to establish some of Krause's personality and his relationship with Lt. Executive Officer Charlie Cole and his crew.
Another passing reference to Germans breaking onto other ships' frequencies is briefly mentioned in the book, but not only does it occur on Greyhound in the movie, but it occurs 3 separate times for some dramatic taunting. I thought this was a good change.
Another good, albeit questionable, change was to name one of the messboys, Cleveland. Cleveland expresses continuous concern over how much Krause has eaten, who acts appreciative, but never actually eats anything. This relationship is entirely nonexistent in the book. A messboy
is reported to be killed when one of the guns is destroyed, but no mind is paid to his death and the funeral scene is almost completely glossed over like a formality. The adaptation adds this connection and breaks it for a heartfelt moment.
Speaking of, when that turret is destroyed, Krause takes over for Damage Control and orders the torpedoes ("fish") be launched dead to prevent the spread of fire from blowing them up. This contributes to the recurring theme of depleting resources.
There's no references to "screws" or "screw noises" or "overrevving screws" anywhere in the book,
Krause never consults Cole about breaking radio silence or interrupting their zigzag pattern,
Krause is also already aware of what
Pillenwerfers are, as opposed to having them explained to him,
Stuff like this I'm totally fine with because it serves to bring to the audiences' attention issues which in the book are pretty much entirely contained within Krause's train of thought, which I feel brings us around to what is probably the biggest change in the movie: the complete absence of an inner monologue.
The "little character" criticism is absolutely true, especially when you consider the book. In the book, Kraus is a very different person than he's presented onscreen. He's a diehard Christian duty-bound to the US Navy, but not only does he weave scripture is his thoughts, but his thoughts narrate the majority of what you read.
For example, Eagle, Harry, and Dicky are interchangely referred to as
Victor,
James, and
Dodge, but because Eagle, Harry, and Dicky are their codenames, those are the only names spoken in the movie.
Honestly, if Krause spoke in the movie like he spoke in the book, the vast majority of his dialog would be saying "VERY WELL", which is his canned response to literally everything.
Krause is portrayed in the book as an extremely impersonal character. He must do everything by the book; he doesn't joke, he doesn't slack off, he's never even rude to anyone, even when his subordinates **** up. He is hyper critical of himself and everyone else around him. Everything anyone says or does is a reflection of their competency at the job they are assigned and it will be noted in his eventual report. He's THAT kind of guy.
In the movie, when Greyhound is alerted to "men overboard" and the rescue ship Cadena is requesting immediate assistance,
Ernie Krause is faced with a tough choice, and ultimately decides to save the men in the water at the expense of another ship. Without any inner monologue or other context, this just comes across as his character being more empathetic than pragmatic in the moment.
In the book,
George Krause isn't thinking about the men in the water at all. Sure he spares a moment to lament the death of the Germans he kills, but his decision to save the men in the water is entirely a cost-benefit analysis of what will hurt him and/or the convoy more in the long run. Many of his decisions, and pleasantries, are entirely downstream of the reasoning that he mustn't offend his allies and his crew must have ample sleep and morale to most effectively serve him later.
Ernie Krause only briefly echoes this characterization when he corrects himself to add "thank you" to the end of a message.
Meanwhile, George Krause is later faced with a second opportunity to save men overboard
and straight up refuses.
This is by far the biggest "major exception" to the movie in terms of changes made. Not having access to Krause's thoughts, when his entire character revolves around keep his opinions to himself and never doing anything unexpected of him, robs us of the majority of his personality.
On one hand, I don't mind because I really don't think fencing analogies would have added anything of value to the movie, but on the other hand, we don't have as much insight into this character's mind as 48 hours of a standing upright takes it's toll on his body and mind, which is a huge focus of the story.
It takes about an hour of the movie's hour and thirty minutes to demonstrate that Krause is tired, whereas in the book, a tremendous amount of time is languished on describing how tired he his and how it increasingly affects his ability to think and strategize.
This leads into my biggest grief with the adaptation: While the pacing is great, it comes at the cost of the book's presentation, which breaks down the events of the story into each and every "watch" that takes place.
Excepting Krause and Cole, every member of the ship is on a rotating shift schedule. 4 hours on, 8 hours off. This means that over the course of the whole 48 hours, every single character is replaced by 2 other people twice throughout each day.
That means there are 3 Officers of the Deck, 3 Helmsmen, 3 Gunneries, 3 Sonar Officers, 3 Communications Officers, 3 Messboys, 3 Messengers, etc. Not all of them are given names, but many of them are.
In the book, this communicates better than anything else the passage of time, which contrasts with Krause who insists on being everpresent throughout the events. When he sees a familiar face, it re-emphasizes that a whole 12 hours has passed since he last saw them.
In the movie, however, we timeskip around quite a bit. First we skip 4 hours, then another 4 hours, then 12 hours, then 8 hours...
There's even a shift change between the big timestamps that appear on the screen. The relative lack of these I think hurts the narrative as it pertains to Krause's vigilance. If I had any say I would have lavished a bit more time on detailing the changing of the guard. Even if you don't remember all of the characters, it would be valuable to distinguish them so as to communicate that these characters' roles are all constantly changing.
I also noticed a weird discrepancy.
Nystrom, Carling, and Harbutt, are each the three Officers of the Deck, but in the movie, a character named "Watson" is treated as taking over as Officer of the Deck. I could be misremembering, but I don't think Watson is an Officer of the Deck, I believe he's introduced as a Helmsman, so it's very strange to see him show up and start giving orders, let alone when there's already three others whose schedule would preclude a fourth.
There's also only one Gunnery character throughout the whole movie, a "Mr. Lopez". I don't think there's a Mr. Lopez in the book.
I also noticed that 22 knots is referred to as the maximum speed Greyhound can travel at while using sonar. In the book I'm certain it's 12 knots. A quick Google search also affirms that sonar was only viable at 12-15 knots because any faster would cause too much interference.
Speaking of speed, a lot detail was lavished on the strategy of destroyer v. submarine warfare. A destroyer could easily outpace a submarine, because it's top speed was slower and that maximum dropped if it elected to dive beneath the surface, which it inevitably would if a destroyer ran it down.
This was survivable though because even underwater, a submarine's turning radius was much smaller, so with the delay of sonar location updates, the submarine could slip left or right from underneath the destroyer to escape it, and it would be a 50/50 whether the destroyer turned the same direction. Positioning via sonar was also difficult because updates only came periodically, so one moment you might be turning the right direction and next moment they'd have slipped away.
The depth of the submarine also affected the usefulness of depth charges, you didn't want to detonate charges too far above or too far below them.
It's not surprised that after discovering that Greyhound is fairly historically accurate, that TGS was written in the 1950s after consulting with an Admiral, 2 Commanders, and a Commanding Officer.
The little education I got out of the movie was
NOT carried over from the book by any means. There was a lot of shit I did not understand because the book never bothered to explain it.
If you don't know what "abaft" or turning "handsomely" means, it's not going to tell you. I was so confused when I kept seeing the term "astern" used to reference where ships were in relation to each other. Once I saw that it meant "behind", what I was reading made so much more sense.
Another thing that tripped me up was Krause always "going down to the head", which is never elaborated on. What the **** is "the head"? It is vaguely described as him going up and down a ladder from the pilothouse, but it's something that he's constantly desperate to do, even though it's never explained what he's doing or why he wants to do it so badly.
Simultaneously, I'm like, "This dude's been up 48 hours and he's been putting away nothing but coffee. When the **** does this guy take a piss? Does he never piss?"
Low and behold, only after I finish the book and look it up do I find that "going down to the head" means going to the toilet. I feel like a lot of confusion could have been avoided if the author hadn't assumed I was also
a ****ing Vice-Admiral.
Anyway, there's been some positive, some negative, but I think a very big thing about this adaptation is how it changes the ending.
In the book, the Victor takes a hit and is eventually evacuated to the Cadena because it's unsalvageable. After this, Keeling notices two sonar pips between them and the convoy and discovers it's two straggling ships (including the Southland which is a casualty in the movie).
There's a slow menial wrapping up of loose strings until air cover finally arrives, Krause is relieved of his duty, described as having a "black depression", and falls asleep as narration basically gives us a snapshot of his sad pathetic life, suggesting that he now might he happy that he's sleeping.
In the movie, the two pips are revealed to be submarines and we have another combat encounter culminating in the air cover finally arriving to save the day. Attention is drawn to the crew's awareness of Krause finally retiring to his cabin after 2 days straight, we get a shot of a merchant ship applauding the Greyhound for getting them to safety which is a nice feelgood moment, and Krause eventually retires to a caption about the toll of the war and a credit roll with some actual wartime naval footage to close us out.
I think this ending is MUCH better. It's continues the exciting pace that the movie's set and actually uses the plane as a payoff, rather than the whole thing being some meandering about how miserable Krause is to not see his ship dock at Liverpool, and how he's a lonely **** whose only waifu is the US Navy.
Overall, despite the sacrifices made for time and in the interest of crafting a thriller without a microphone held up to Krause's less-than-comforting innermost thoughts, I think Greyhound is an excellent adaptation of TGS.
It keeps far more details than you'd appreciate before a read, but also takes bold creative liberties in reformatting the movie for a tense and consistent 2 hour thriller.
I have actually watched several times since reviewing it, making it my most rewatched movie is recent memory, and if you were to ask me whether I preferred the book or the movie, the movie would take the cake every time.
I feel like reading the book has only increased my appreciation and understanding of the movie, but it also gives me some subtext for why Krause does certain things, even though the movie doesn't take the time to explore the reasons for them.
There's more I could say about how the cold and darkness are underrepresented in the movie in the movie compared to the book, and how Eagle and Harry leave their stations without permission, blahblahblahblahblah... Holy **** this is so long.
My new rating for now is:
Final Verdict: [Excellent]
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