Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * *
Cast: Tom Hanks, Alexander Black, Sarita Choudhury, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Tracey Fairaway, Tom Skerritt, Jane Perry, Michael Baral, Lewis Rainer, David Menkin, Christie Meyer, Megan Maczko, Ben Whishaw, Kahalid Laith.
A mid-life crisis is to be expected, perhaps in many cases looked forward to as a chance to wreck havoc on the world around you and take apart your own life one carefully stacked brick at a time.
The mid-life crisis should always lead to a bigger moment, the anxiety, the chest pains, the scare with a health issue, all lead to fundamental and lasting change; it is a change perhaps best narrated by the Talking Heads Once in a Lifetime and Tom Hanks.
Certainly the former is true as it serves up the premise for A Hologram for The King with great intentions and whilst Tom Hanks never makes a bad film, he comes perilously close to making a very average one as he chases down an I.T. contract in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert and finds the local wolves daring and not worthy of shooting as they steal sheep.
It may be seen as flippant to suggest that the metaphor of wolves and sheep could be seen as the best thing about the film, withstanding Alexander Black’s performance as local driver Yousef, but the mid-life crisis in which the film centres around doesn’t lend much more charm throughout and it is only by the grace of Tom Hanks unnerving ability to make you smile no matter what film you are watching of his, that makes the experience once more an average and passable way to spend time.
The fish out of water scenario is a well used one and normally it gives a well meaning nudge to the audiences to suggest that they might investigate further, that the thought of trekking across Australia in the footsteps of Crocodile Dundee might be a fun way to spend three months for example, however getting lost in Jeddah, the bustle of a city at prayer, the bleaching effect of the sun and the hot ill tempered sand might be seen as more of an aggressive advertising campaign than an appealing and alluring thought of discovery. In that sense the film and the notion have a lot in common.
A Hologram for The King serves its purpose but it not, by a long chalk the finest moment on screen for Tom Hanks, audiences know there are better out there and they deserve such.
Ian D. Hall