Cast Away

(12, 144 minutes)

THERE are those who wished Tom Hanks, in the irritating guise of idiot sage Forrest Gump, had just kept on running head down to the end of the world and beyond.

Perhaps he did, for Hanks has met himself coming back, and the yearly man of Oscars is now playing another everyman who goes through a life-changing experience that involves growing a prodigious beard and altering his body shape and looks - and Robert Zemeckis is still directing operations.

The difference is that whereas chocolate-box philosopher Gump was a chameleon, undergoing many changes in the manner of Woody Allen's Zelig at the heart of history-making American events, Hanks's new character goes through only one change, at the edge of the world.

The prospect of spending more than two hours watching Hanks, at least an hour of it on his own battling with toothache, hunger and the seas on a deserted desert island, may have you running for the door, but Cast Away is far better than Forrest Chump, and yet another Oscar nomination is surely in the post.

Hanks is Chuck Noland, a time-obsessed, trouble-shooting FedEx systems engineer, whose parting gift to his girlfriend (Helen Hunt) is an engagement ring as he heads off on another hyper operation. When the plane goes down in the ocean - a fantastic, seat-clenching storm scene from Zemeckis - he is the only survivor, but with no means of communication once he is marooned on a remote island.

Missing presumed dead, this latter-day Robinson Crusoe must fend for himself, learning even more about himself in the wild than the City Slickers.

Not once does Zemeckis switch the attention to the search or the FedEx office, or Chuck's girlfriend, thereby enhancing the sense of Noland's loneliness in five years alone, while enabling Hanks to run through his gamut of sympathy-inducing acting skills - and survival skills!

Not least of his achievements is changing his physical shape so dramatically, first bulking up and then losing weight to the point of emaciation - necessitating a year's break in filming - to take on the look of a Glastonbury Festival crusty.

Sadly, Zemeckis allows his film to make the opposite journey, with Cast Away turning sentimental and flabby towards the end once the profoundly altered Noland returns to civilisation and "realises that losing everything he ever thought important was the best thing that could ever have happened to him". Hanks's performance survives even that final cheesy ordeal.