Mr. Movie: Hanks is terrific but he couldn’t save ‘Finch’

Finch Weinberg is an expert in robotics. His story starts several years after the Earth was hit by a life-ending solar flare.

Almost all people and animals got turned to toast by huge holes ripped in the ozone layer. Since food and other critical supplies are scarce, the few survivors stay away from each other.

Fitch and his dog get by making runs to grocery stores and other outlets for what little is left.

While out, Hanks dresses in a bio suit and avoids the sun. It’s deadly. So are the angry, swirling dust storms with lethal bolts of lightning slashing this way and that.

Finch is also dying of radiation poisoning.

Finch creates a robot to take care of the dog when he’s gone. The machine’s name is Jeff, and it is able to learn, think and reason.

On a trip to San Francisco, it is the machine’s thinking — or should we say, wrong-thinking — that provides Finch with difficult challenges, and some dangers.

Credit director Miguel Sapochnik (“Game of Thrones”) and his effects crew with using a combination of real life settings, miniature sets and backdrops to paint a very believable picture of Finch’s dilemma.

What they — and writers, Craig Luck and Ivor Powell — aren’t able to do is establish any kind of tension, or worry that Fitch, robot and dog won’t succeed in getting safely to the City by the Bay.

Not that Hanks fans will care.

He is — as always — very good. No one does the regular guy routine better. Hanks always seems so accessible.

If you could wade through his army of security guards, Hanks is the movie star you could most comfortably run up to and give a high-five.

While Hanks is terrific, the movie is not.

Too often it trudges down plot paths better trudged by other movies. Early in “Fitch” films like, “I Am Legend” and “Omega Man” come to mind.

Not to cast negatives Caleb Landry Jones’ way, but it feels like the voice of Jeff is a deliberate copy of Tim Blaney who did the voice of Number 5 in the original “Short Circuit.”

That movie also seems to be the inspiration for the idiotic things the inexperienced robot does.

The comparisons could continue but you get the point.

As the two characters trundle down the highway in a beat-up RV, the man to machine banter never quite gives you to an emotional connection.

Finch talks to the robot in a folksy, grandfatherly fashion and teaches it important life lessons via his own life experiences.

It all seems forced.

The robot also takes everything literally and that gets them into all kinds of trouble. As noted earlier, what isn’t in the plot is enough trouble, or tension, to justify the nearly two-hours of “Finch.”

Blame this on Powell and Luck who are first-time screenwriters.

Powell was an associate producer for Ridley Scott on “Alien” in 1979 and “Blade Runner” in 1982.

Luck’s writing experience is nil, and his movie-making experience is go-fer work on films like “Maleficent,” “Thor: The Dark World” and a few others.

Now, as luck would have it, Luck now has writing a Tom Hanks movie as a career credit and Powell — who hasn’t done anything in film since 1982 — has jump-started his movie career after a long absence.

Will “Finch” get them enough raves to propel them forward to other projects?

Probably not. Nor will you remember “Finch” as being one of Hanks’ better films.

Rated PG-13 for mature themes and some violence. It can be streamed on Apple TV+.

Rating: 2 1/2 out of 5

This story was originally published November 12, 2021 at 5:55 PM with the headline "Mr. Movie: Hanks is terrific but he couldn’t save ‘Finch’."