But in the bowels of the nation's multiplexes, the mood is not the same. There's something sour in the way people regard this odd film and its doldrums. There's the start of exasperation. I don't think audiences know what it's about -- apart from being "about" Hanks, in the way shadows are about the sun. And being about Federal Express (more of which anon).

"Cast Away" isn't a tour de force; it's slow, predictable and boring, yet also pious, sanctimonious and burdened with airs of self-improvement, as if Hanks had thought, Gee, yes, let's do it -- let's have everyone feel that 1,500 days on a desert island would do them good, too. And strangest of all, the story is left there inert and undeveloped. We do not really see Chuck facing the hazards and difficulties of the island, much less the limits of his character. Instead, a kind of static personality simply triumphs -- or ignores more intriguing prospects. What he gives us, apart from his reputation as a great actor, is a mix of amiability and authenticity; you feel that it must have happened. Tom wouldn't do it otherwise, would he? He wouldn't do something invented. He is the actor of choice whenever life and history force themselves onto the screen. He is the exact marriage between America's dream of real, modest heroes and homespun, shy actors. He is our Jimmy Stewart.

Or is he just the brisk, friendly, efficient face of Federal Express? FedEx is the priority-mail delivery service that took over the nation's trust from the U.S. Postal Service; it charges high rates, but it has a spectacular record for reliable delivery. The company is based in Memphis, Tenn., and it enjoys a corps of young, profit-participating, religiously motivated workers. They are smart, fast, polite -- they are, for many of us, the best dream of efficiency available on earth. And Hanks, I think, after several emblematic roles now finds it natural and even necessary that he should play parts that speak to the nation.

Hanks' character in "Cast Away," Chuck Noland, is a FedEx executive troubleshooter, a company man who preaches the pressure of time to everyone. He's a success, yet too busy to notice. He has a perfect girlfriend (Helen Hunt); they have sex when their paths cross, but no time to develop a deeper relationship. Chuck is all nervous energy, naggy detail and crackling, empty camaraderie. It is the notion of the film that he is riding for a fall.

To that extent, the film is critical of FedEx's obsession with time and priority at the expense of substance. Still, this is a movie that goes way beyond the bounds of modern product placement. The screen here is a riot of white, purple and orange; FedEx aircraft, trucks, uniforms and packaging fill the movie's first 20 minutes. It is on a FedEx plane, over the Pacific, that Chuck is tossed into the ocean in a vivid crash.

It's plain that some kind of fate has elected to cast Chuck away, if only to see if he can find a life beyond filling FedEx time. What follows looks and feels like life -- or life rendered through hit TV shows such as "Survivor." See Chuck make fire. See Chuck eat crab. See Chuck gaze at a picture of Hunt.

There is such implied fact in seeing Hanks do this or that that we have to keep reminding ourselves that this isn't "based on a true story," as the movies like to say. There wasn't an actual Chuck Noland, and if there had been, he would have perished well short of 1,500 days. Lucy Irvine's 1983 book "Castaway" had two people going to a desert island as an experiment, with plenty of supplies and help. But that book makes clear that the two people suffered terribly from the diet, the exposure and the general decline in their health. Whereas Chuck, or Tom, turns into a lean, bronzed fighting machine capable of catching a fat, fleet fish at one thrust of a homemade spear.

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