No Thanks, Hanks

For the better part of the last decade, America has been charmed by the near-yearly Tom Hanks Big Movie-each one essentially pre-sold as a smash without any question of its creativity, political daring or cinematic quality. Even if Hanks doesn't win an Oscar every time, the inevitability of his nomination is a bit disheartening. It doesn't seem that Hanks has earned his crown as All-American Everyman as much as he's been handed it by the divine intervention of the Hollywood machine.

"Blasphemer!" you, dear readers, exclaim. "Communist!" To question such a beloved national treasure is akin to burning the flag or disliking baseball. But before you turn to the crossword in disgust or grab for your pitchforks and torches, take a moment to recall the seven-year reign of King Hanks. Omitting his fine performance in the big issue masterpiece Philadelphia, Hanks has built a cloned platoon of middle-of-the-road nice guys in tough situations. Forrest Gump leeched onto the neck of a nostalgia-prone nation in '93, managing to reduce social turmoil to a simplified mush of faux-populism-and planting in Hanks the sturdy yes-man persona he has portrayed ever since. Simple Forrest was an icon of everything imagined to be good about America. Sunnily and blindly pushing onward through a hurricane of cultural angst, Gump manages to trivialize the serious issues of the generation it celebrates. The role doesn't seem so bad until considered alongside the next three emotionally mature Gump kin, all of them yes-men doing their jobs for the country-whether it be fighting the Cold War in space (Apollo 13), fighting a World War against the Nazi menace (Saving Private Ryan) or struggling to enforce the law during the Depression (The Green Mile). Stripped of their context, the three roles demonstrate no distinguishing character traits.

It is only fitting that Zemeckis and Hanks teamed up to update Gump for the new millennium with Cast Away, stripping our favorite Everydude of his comfortable bourgeois lifestyle to see how he fares without spaceships or electric chairs or assault rifles. It could have been a landmark performance for Hanks, a daring exploration of the crippled, scared soul of modern man robbed of his tools and his watch. Instead, Cast Away is one of the biggest disappointments of the year. Obvious where it should be profound, formulaic where it could have been original and entertaining where it should be sparse, Cast Away reduces Hanks' cathartic re-entry into civilization to sappy love and fuzzy existential platitudes. Part of this is laziness, hamstrung by a script that allows the simplicity of concept to preclude any interesting development.

A more reprehensible explanation may simply be cowardice. Perhaps Hanks and Zemeckis were wary of expounding on what should have been a deeply disturbing character transformation, and tiptoed carefully around any rough edges that could have scraped Hanks' nice guy image. A more ambitious actor would find friendship with a volleyball to be just the tip of his character's descent into madness. And Zemeckis must have an acute case of sexual prurience if he believes that a man with a picture of his lover and that much time on his hands would just sit there staring at her.

But it was certainly no surprise when the Academy reserved a Best Actor slot for Mr. Big. America drools all over Hanks like a yenta on a prized bachelor catch-"Such a nice Everyboy-I bet he's a doctor!" This is Hanks' fifth Oscar nod and his fourth Golden Globe win. Isn't it time to question whether his status as the era's most decorated actor is actually a reflection of inspired and superior talent? Or is America merely flinging these awards at itself? Knowing that a difficult, uncompromising performance like Mark Ruffalo's in You Can Count On Me was passed up to make room in the Best Actor category for a role in which the biggest challenge was weight loss makes Hanks' Gilligan seem even more out of place among the other four passionate, conflicted contenders. Let's hope that America can look away from Hanks' mirror-and that the Academy's narcissism won't override appreciation of true artistic talent.