Greyhound (film)

Greyhound is a 2020 American war film directed by Aaron Schneider and starring Tom Hanks, who also wrote the screenplay. The film is based on the 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by C. S. Forester, and follows a US Navy commander on his first assignment commanding a multi-national escort destroyer group of four, defending an Allied convoy from U-boats during the Battle of the Atlantic. The film also stars Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan, and Elisabeth Shue.

Greyhound was initially scheduled for theatrical release in the United States on June 12, 2020, by Sony Pictures Releasing. The release was delayed indefinitely and then canceled because of widespread disruption and shutdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic. Sony sold the distribution rights to Apple TV+, which released the film digitally on July 10, 2020. It received positive reviews from critics, with praise for the action sequences and effective use of its 90-minute runtime. At the 93rd Academy Awards, the film earned a nomination for Best Sound.

Plot
In February 1942, Allied convoy HX-25, consisting of 37 merchant and troop ships en route for Liverpool, enters the "Black Pit", the Mid-Atlantic gap, where they will be out of range of protective air cover. The convoy's escort consists of the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Keeling, radio call sign "Greyhound", captained by Commander Ernest Krause of the United States Navy; the British Tribal-class destroyer HMS James, call sign "Harry"; the Polish Grom-class destroyer ORP Viktor, call sign "Eagle"; and the Canadian Flower-class corvette HMCS Dodge, call sign "Dicky". Krause is overall commander of the escort ships but, despite his seniority and extensive naval education, it is his first wartime command; the captains under him have been at war for more than two years.

Three days into the "Black Pit", high-frequency direction finding intercepts a German transmission and Greyhound identifies a U-boat heading towards the convoy. The sub tries to slip under Greyhound, but Krause sinks it with a full pattern of depth charges. As they return, another U-boat bearing an emblem of a grey wolf sinks a Greek merchant ship. Greyhound too is attacked but with careful maneuvering evades the torpedo. Greyhound receives reports of five other U-boats from the other escorts; a wolfpack is staying just out of firing range, waiting for nightfall when the escorts will have little visibility.

That evening, the 'grey wolf' U-boat torpedoes an oil tanker and escapes Greyhound by using an underwater decoy device called a pillenwerfer, "pill-thrower", so that depth charges are wasted. Krause chooses to rescue survivors from the tanker before going to aid the other ships, which results in the loss of another supply ship. A crew member of the U-boat, identifying as "Grey Wolf", taunts the convoy and its escorts via radio transmission. The wolfpack commences attack that night and sinks three more merchant ships.

The next morning, Krause learns that Greyhound has only six depth charges left. Greyhound and Dicky combine their attacks and use surface broadsides to sink one of the U-boats. Dicky receives minor damage due to the close range, and Greyhound is hit on its port side by the U-boat's deck gun. Mess attendant George Cleveland and two sailors are killed. During the funeral service for them, the Germans sink another Allied ship and badly damage Eagle, which later sinks; Krause allows the crew of Eagle to abandon ship. Although worried about compromising the remaining defenders, Krause chooses to break radio silence; he orders transmission of a single word "help" to the Admiralty. A return message is deciphered as "expect aircraft" and "point X-ray", which suggests reinforcements being dispatched and their rendezvous point shall be modified.

With the convoy close to air cover, Greyhound battles two U-boats. After heavy fighting, Greyhound sinks the "Grey Wolf" with a full broadside. A Catalina deployed by British RAF Coastal Command arrives and Greyhound fires to mark the location of the second U-boat, allowing the flying boat to drop its depth charges and sink it. After assessing contact with the remaining U-boats is lost, the head of the relief escorts, HMS Diamond, arrives and relieves Greyhound and the other two destroyers of duty, ordering them to port for repair and refit in Derry; Krause is congratulated for the four U-boat kills. After he sets the new course, passengers and crew of the convoy ships cheer Greyhound's crew. Krause goes to his cabin, where he finally sleeps.

Cast

 * Tom Hanks as Commander Ernie Krause
 * Elisabeth Shue as Evelyn
 * Stephen Graham as Charlie Cole
 * Matt Helm as Lt. Nystrom
 * Craig Tate as Pitts
 * Rob Morgan as Cleveland
 * Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Melvin Lopez
 * Karl Glusman as Red Eppstein
 * Tom Brittney as Lieutenant Watson
 * Joseph Henry Poliquin V as Lee Helmsman #1 “Forbrick”
 * Devin Druid as Homer Wallace
 * Grayson Russell as Signalman #1
 * Dave Davis as Boatswain's Mate #1
 * Michael Benz as Lieutenant Carling
 * Josh Wiggins as Talker #1
 * Chet Hanks as Bushnell
 * Ian James Corlett as captain of HMCS Dodge, call sign "Dicky" (voice)
 * Maximilian Osinski as captain of ORP Viktor, call sign "Eagle" (voice)
 * Dominic Keating as captain of HMS James, call sign "Harry" (voice)
 * Thomas Kretschmann as Grey Wolf (voice)

Production
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. She cheated on him, but he recognizes that he had been part of the problem, as he put the Navy ahead of her. In the film, this aspect is omitted and instead a inclusion of a scene is added where Krause proposes to Evelyn to come with him to a beach, though he accepts her hesitant refusal as the war is going on. 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.

The fictionalised Polish Grom-class destroyer ORP Viktor was based on scans taken of the real Grom-class destroyer ORP Błyskawica, a museum ship in Gdynia, Poland. Pre-production photography took place in January 2018 at sea aboard HMCS Montréal, a frigate of the Royal Canadian Navy. HMCS Sackville, the last surviving Flower-class corvette, was used as the model for the film's corvette, HMCS Dodge. Producers took numerous 3D scans of the restored ship's exterior at Halifax, Nova Scotia to create the CGI version of the corvette.

Filming began in March 2018  aboard USS Kidd in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The actors were trained on the ship.

A fictionalised version of the Kidd is mentioned in the film as having encountered a an underwater decoy device on its first patrol; the actual USS Kidd was not launched until late February 1943. In the studio, sets were created of the bridge and the command center. A gimbal was used to create the effect of crew and furnishings reacting to the ship rolling.

Release
Greyhound was initially scheduled for theatrical release on March 22, 2020 in the United States by Sony Pictures Releasing under its Columbia Pictures label. After the rapid onset and disruption of the Covid 19 pandemic, the release was delayed to May 8, 2020, and finally to June 12, 2020.

Hanks was diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier in March 2020 while filming Elvis for Warner Bros.

In May 2020, it was announced that Apple TV+ had acquired distribution rights to Greyhound for about $70 million; Stage 6 Films was left as the sole Sony distributor as of the release of the film. Apple TV+ released the film digitally on July 10, 2020.

Apple said that the film had the biggest debut weekend of any program in the platform's history. Deadline Hollywood said that the figures were "commensurate with a summer theatrical box office big hit". In November, Variety reported the film was the 24th-most watched straight-to-streaming title of 2020 up to that point.

Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on  reviews, with an average rating of. The website's critics consensus reads: "Greyhound's characters aren't as robust as its action sequences, but this fast-paced World War II thriller benefits from its efficiently economical approach". On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.

Owen Gleiberman, in his review for Variety, said the film is "less a drama than a tense and sturdy diary of the logistics of battle" and "though much of the action is set in the open air of the ship's command perch, Greyhound often feels like a submarine thriller: tense, tight, boxed-in". Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips gave the film three out of four and said: "Like the canine, [Greyhound is] trim, narrow of scope, and it runs efficiently and well despite a barrage of on-screen time stamps and vessel identification markers".

David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "C−" and wrote: "A terse and streamlined dad movie that's shorter than a Sunday afternoon nap and just as exciting, Greyhound bobs across the screen like a nuanced character study that's been entombed in a 2,000-ton iron casket and set adrift over the Atlantic. The film offers a handful of brief hints at the tortured hero who Forester invented for his book ... but the whole thing is far too preoccupied with staying afloat to profile the guy at the helm in any meaningful way".

Planned sequel
A sequel is in production.