Finch
starring Tom Hanks and Caleb Landry Jones
written by Craig Luck and Ivor Powell
directed by Miguel Sapochnik
Rating: ♦♦♦♦◊
Finch is a post-apocalyptic survival film featuring just a single actor, Tom Hanks. The apocalypse here is not nuclear war. It’s an apocalypse of climate change - but not destruction of the biosphere through industrial pollution causing fatal, runaway global warming and climate change. Instead, it’s climate change caused by excessively large solar flares bombarding the earth with radiation after destroying the planet’s ozone layer.
Fifteen years have passed since the planet Earth was turned into a largely uninhabitable wasteland ravaged by extreme weather events while being scorched by the sun’s ultraviolet rays and increasing temperatures. One of the few survivors, robotics engineer Finch Weinberg, lives alone with his dog Goodyear and a helper-robot Dewey in an underground St. Louis laboratory once owned by the company he worked for before the cataclysm. Finch only ventures outside to search for supplies wearing a protective suit.
Finch is working on creating a more advanced humanoid robot companion to take care of his dog once he is gone. He feeds it volumes of encyclopedic knowledge, including a manual for training and caring for dogs. However, Goodyear initially doesn't trust the robot (which eventually chooses the name Jeff).
Finch discovers that a massive storm is approaching St. Louis that will certainly destroy the area and kill him. Finch, Jeff, Dewey, and Goodyear set out in a heavily modified motorhome towards San Francisco. Because of the hasty departure, Jeff could download only 72% of his encyclopedic data, and his mental capacity requires training. Despite his condition worsening, Finch tries to teach Jeff some valuable lessons about life and how to protect Goodyear. Jeff's inquisitive behavior both amuses and frustrates Finch, but the robot slowly shows more initiative.
I was intrigued by Finch’s environmental protection suit. He demonstrates the danger of UV radiation to exposed skin by putting his bare hand into direct sunlight. It begins to fry like bacon in a frying pan immediately. The environmental sensors built into his suit describe a world of dust, smoke, 150º temperatures, and dangerous levels of UV radiation.
During his road trip, when he reaches the Rocky Mountains, the environment changes for some unexplained reason. Living plants and insects are discovered, and Finch can safely remove his suit. Along the way, the group encounters other survivors in abandoned cities. But just like in a dystopian Charlton Heston movie, other people are a danger, not blessing, because “hunger turned men into murderers.”
I wished for more action.
Hunger turned men into murderers.