‘Greyhound’: a throwback look at ‘the last good war’

Movie review: "Greyhound," directed by Aaron Schneider (screenplay by Tom Hanks), starring Tom Hanks, Stephen Graham, Elisabeth Shue, Thomas Kretschmann. Streaming through Apple TV+.

Just as former newscaster Tom Brokaw labeled those who lived through World War II as the “Greatest Generation,” that global conflict itself has come to be known as “the last good war.” As Time magazine’s Bruce W. Nelan wrote in 1998, “Not that any war is good and not that there weren't terrible sacrifices, but World War II was a war that had to be fought and won. This was an unambiguous struggle between good and evil.”

This attitude makes things easy, or at least easier, for those among us who tend to view the world as an up-down, in-out, black-and-white binary exercise. The view of the conflict that wracked the world between the years 1939 and 1945 as “the last good war” offers the simplest answers to a particularly horrible era of history.

Representative of this view, many of the movies that captured that time – even the great ones such as William Wyler’s aptly if ironically titled 1946 film “The Best Years of Our Lives” – were by and large similarly simplistic in theme and tone. Though there have been exceptions, especially in recent years, changing attitudes and the efforts of filmmakers such as Oliver Stone and Francis Ford Coppola led to war films made during the Vietnam era tackling far more complicated scenarios.

Which is why the Apple Original movie “Greyhound” feels as if it’s from another, earlier and far more innocent time. Based on a screenplay written by the actor Tom Hanks, adapted from C.S. Forester’s 1955 novel “The Good Shepherd,” “Greyhound” is a rousing study of the courage shown by the crew of the U.S.S. Keeling, a destroyer with the call sign Greyhound that is tasked with protecting a 37-ship Allied convoy bearing supplies bound for Great Britain.

Directed by Aaron Schneider, “Greyhound” is streaming through the Apple TV subscription service.

The movie’s time frame is the winter of 1942. Hanks plays the Keeling’s captain, a veteran naval officer named Ernest Krause. Though he is on his first wartime mission, Krause is the senior officer of the four ships escorting the convoy. It is he, then, who must take charge when word comes that a German U-boat – and ultimately a whole wolf pack – is preparing to attack once the ships enter “the black pit” – that part of the Atlantic crossing in which the ships will have no air cover for nearly three full days.

Other than a couple of short scenes that show Krause meeting with the woman he loves, played as the obligatory symbol that the movie considers her to be by Elisabeth Shue, the movie gives us basically no backstory on Krause. What we learn about him comes through the few scenes in which he is shown quietly but devoutly praying, from the quick thinking he shows in adapting to the tactics of the German submariners, from his willingness to admit his mistakes and learn from his errors and from the dedication to duty that he shows through long hours of neglecting food and – visual clue – dealing with his blistered and bloody feet.

What director Schneider spends most of his efforts on is portraying action, with Krause haunting the destroyer’s decks, his every move attracting the stares of his youthful, clearly frightened crew, and all of it accompanied by the pulse-pounding musical score of composer Blake Neely.

Showing just how far CGI has advanced in recent years, most of the action comes rendered courtesy of actors standing in front of green screens and aided by a whole gang of computer-literate workers sitting in front of glowing monitors. This is the case whether we’re talking about exploding depth charges, oil slicks spreading across the water to mark undersea death, torpedoes scraping the sides of their targets, the distant blossom of ships on fire at night or – most impressive – an ascending view from sea-born terror up through the clouds to capture the wondrous sight of the Aurora Borealis.

Those computer graphics are certainly more effective than the film’s acting. For his part, two-time Oscar winner Hanks is required to do little more than grimace continually, eyes squinted and lips pursed as Krause ponders the loneliness of his first command. Shue is basically window dressing, which is another aspect of “Greyhound” that fits with old-school war films. Yet as Krause’s executive officer, British actor Stephen Graham is everything he needs to be, as is German actor Thomas Kretschmann who, though unseen, provides the sinister voice of the submarine commander Grey Wolf who taunts Krause over the radio.

In the end, “Greyhound” works best as a tribute to those who fought in World War II, a mission it acknowledges during one of the few pauses between the movie’s otherwise near-constant action: a burial-at-sea ceremony.

Even in this far more cynical age, reverence for those who died doing their duty is the best honor we can bestow upon the so-called “last good war.”

Below: A scene from "Greyhound."