Hanks plays a ship’s captain under attack from a wolf pack of Nazi U-boats in a tense and poignant second world war drama
Tom Hanks has often found that the
MILITARY or quasi-military uniform of a much-loved authority figure rather suits him: that sensitive, faintly rheumy gaze is often to be seen under a peaked cap or battered helmet. He was the container-ship captain in Paul Greengrass’s Captain Phillips, the heroic airline pilot in Clint Eastwood’s Sully, the teacher-turned-soldier in Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan. Now he is the US naval commander Ernest Krause in this robustly old-fashioned second world war adventure, in which Hanks also makes his screenwriting debut, adapting the 1955 novel, The Good Shepherd by CS Forester.
Hanks plays a captain during the Battle of the Atlantic who has finally been promoted. He had been given command of a destroyer with the call sign “Greyhound” and tasked with protecting vital supply convoys on their way from the US to
Britain, through mountainous seas and surrounded by U-boats led by lethally cunning German sadists.