Greyhound
Release poster
Directed by	Aaron Schneider
Screenplay by	Tom Hanks
Based on	The Good Shepherd by C. S. Forester
Produced by	Gary Goetzman
Starring	Tom Hanks Stephen Graham Rob Morgan Elisabeth Shue
Cinematography	Shelly Johnson
Edited by	Mark Czyzewski Sidney Wolinsky
Music by	Blake Neely
Production companies	Sony Pictures Entertainment[1] Stage 6 Films FilmNation Entertainment Bron Creative Zhengfu Pictures Playtone Sycamore Pictures
Distributed by	Apple TV+
Release date	July 10, 2020 (2020-07-10)
Running time	91 minutes[2]
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$50.3 million[3][4]

Greyhound is a 2020 American war film directed by Aaron Schneider and starring Tom Hanks, who also wrote the screenplay.^[5] Set during the Battle of the Atlantic, the film is based on the 1955 novel The Good Shepherd by C. S. Forester.

It also stars Stephen Graham, Rob Morgan, and Elisabeth Shue. The film follows a US Navy commander on his first assignment commanding a multi-national escort destroyer group of four. They defend an Allied convoy of thirty-seven ships from German U-boats in early 1942 during the Battle of the Atlantic, shortly after the United States has officially entered World War II.

Greyhound was initially scheduled for theatrical release in the United States on June 12, 2020, by Sony Pictures Releasing. The release was delayed indefinitely and then canceled because of widespread disruption and shutdowns from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sony sold the distribution rights to Apple TV+, which released the film digitally on July 10, 2020. It received positive reviews from critics, with praise for the action sequences and effective use of its 90-minute runtime. At the 93rd Academy Awards, the film earned a nomination for Best Sound.

Plot

In February 1942, convoy HX-25, consisting of 37 Allied merchant and troop ships, making its way to Liverpool, enters the "Black Pit", the Mid-Atlantic gap, where they will be out of range of protective air cover for the next five days. The convoy's escort consists of the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Keeling (DD-548), radio call sign "Greyhound", captained by Commander Ernest Krause of the United States Navy; the British Tribal-class destroyer HMS James F80, call sign "Harry"; the Polish Grom-class destroyer ORP Viktor H34, call sign "Eagle"; and the Canadian Flower-class corvette, HMCS Dodge K136,^[6] call sign "Dicky". Krause is overall commander of the escort ships, but despite his seniority and extensive naval education, it is his first wartime command. The captains below him have been at war for more than two years.

Three days later, high-frequency direction finding from the convoy flagship intercepts a German transmission and Greyhound identifies a surfaced U-boat heading towards the convoy. It moves to attack. The sub tries to slip under Greyhound, but Krause sinks it with a full pattern of depth charges, to the crew's jubilation.

As they return, another U-boat, bearing an emblem of a grey wolf, sinks a Greek merchant ship, as Krause moves Greyhound to assist, and with careful maneuvering evades a torpedo fired at his ship by the U-boat. Greyhound receives reports of five other U-boats from the other escorts, indicating that a wolfpack consisting of six U-boats is staying just out of firing range of the convoy waiting for nightfall. The escorts then will have zero visibility.

That evening, the 'wolf' U-boat torpedoes an oil tanker and escapes Greyhound by using an underwater decoy device 'Pill-thrower', which tricks the ship's sonar so the destroyer wastes depth charges. Krause chooses to rescue survivors from the tanker first before going to the aid of the other ships. This decision results in the loss of a supply ship.

A German crew member of the U-boat's crew, identifying as "Grey Wolf", taunts the convoy and its escorts via radio transmission. The wolfpack commences attack that night and sinks three merchant ships.

The next morning, Krause learns that Greyhound has only six depth charges left. Greyhound and Dicky combine their attacks using surface broadsides and sink one of the U-boats . Dicky receives minor damage due to the close range combat, and Greyhound is hit on its port side by the U-boat's deck gun. Mess attendant, George Cleveland, and two sailors are killed. During the funeral service for them, the Germans sink another Allied ship and badly damage Eagle, which later sinks.

Krause allows the crew of Eagle to abandon their ship. Although worried about compromising the remaining defenders, Krause chooses to break radio silence; he orders transmitting the single word "help" to the Admiralty. A return message is deciphered as 'expect aircraft' and 'point X-ray', which suggests reinforcements being dispatched and their rendezvous point shall be modified.

With the convoy close to reaching air cover, Greyhound battles two U-boats. After heavy fighting, Greyhound sinks "Grey Wolf" with a full broadside. Air support arrives via a PBY Catalina flying boat deployed by British RAF Coastal Command. Greyhound fires to mark the location of the remaining U-boat, allowing the PBY to depth-charge and sink the sub, and the crew rejoice.

While assessing contact with the remaining U-boats have been lost, the head of the relief escorts, HMS Diamond, arrives and relieves Greyhound and the other two destroyers of their duty. They are due to go to port for repair and refitting in Derry. Krause receives congratulations on the four U-boat kills. While his group sets the new course, passengers and crew of the convoy ships cheer Greyhound's crew. Krause goes to his cabin, where he gives a prayer of thanks.

Cast

• Tom Hanks as Commander Ernie Krause
• Elisabeth Shue as Evelyn
• Stephen Graham as Charlie Cole
• Matt Helm as Lt. Nystrom
• Craig Tate as Pitts
• Rob Morgan as Cleveland
• Manuel Garcia-Rulfo as Melvin Lopez
• Karl Glusman as Red Eppstein
• Tom Brittney as Lieutenant Watson
• Joseph Henry Poliquin V as Lee Helmsman #1 “Forbrick”
• Devin Druid as Homer Wallace
• Grayson Russell as Signalman #1
• Dave Davis as Boatswain's Mate #1
• Michael Benz as Lieutenant Carling
• Josh Wiggins as Talker #1
• Chet Hanks as Bushnell
• Ian James Corlett as captain of HMCS Dodge, call sign "Dicky" (voice)
• Maximilian Osinski as captain of ORP Viktor, call sign "Eagle" (voice)
• Dominic Keating as captain of HMS James, call sign "Harry" (voice)
• Thomas Kretschmann as Grey Wolf (voice)

Production

The film was relatively faithful to the novel, with two major exceptions. The characters and their names remain basically the same (e.g. Ernie Krause is George Krause), and Krause is more bitter about his life, as he was divorced from Evelyn. She cheated on him, but he recognizes that he had been part of the problem, as he put the Navy ahead of her. Nonetheless, in the film, they are still lovers. The character of Cleveland is based on a Filipino messmate; in the novel he survives. The film invents a U-boat using Greyhound's transmitting frequency and broadcasts threatening messages over the ship's loudspeakers.^{[citation needed]}

The fictionalised Polish Grom-class destroyer ORP Viktor was based on scans taken of the real Grom-class destroyer ORP Błyskawica, a museum ship in Gdynia, Poland. Pre-production photography took place in January 2018 at sea aboard HMCS Montréal, a frigate of the Royal Canadian Navy. HMCS Sackville, the last surviving Flower-class corvette, was used as the model for the film's corvette, HMCS Dodge (call sign "Dicky"). Producers took numerous 3D scans of the restored ship's exterior at Halifax, Nova Scotia to create the CGI version of the corvette.^[7]

Filming began in March 2018^[8][9][10] aboard USS Kidd in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.^[11][12] The actors were trained on the ship.

A fictionalised version of the Kidd is mentioned in the film as having encountered a an underwater decoy device on its first patrol. But the USS Kidd was not launched until late February 1943. In the studio, sets were created of the bridge and the command center. A gimbal was used to create the effect of crew and furnishings reacting to the ship rolling.^[13]

Release

Greyhound was initially scheduled for theatrical release on March 22, 2019 in the United States by Sony Pictures Releasing under its Columbia Pictures label. After the rapid onset and disruption of the Covid 19 pandemic, the release was delayed to May 8, 2020, and finally June 12, 2020.^[14][15][16]

Hanks was diagnosed with COVID-19 earlier in March 2020 while filming Elvis for Warner Bros.^{[citation needed]}

In May 2020, it was announced that Apple TV+ had acquired distribution rights to Greyhound for about $70 million; Stage 6 Films was left as the sole Sony distributor as of the release of the film.^[17] Apple TV+ released the film digitally on July 10, 2020.^[18]

Apple said that the film had the biggest debut weekend of any program in the platform's history. Deadline Hollywood said that the figures were "commensurate with a summer theatrical box office big hit".^[19] In November, Variety reported the film was the 24th-most watched straight-to-streaming title of 2020 up to that point.^[20]

Reception

On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 79% based on 228 reviews, with an average rating of 6.5/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Greyhound's characters aren't as robust as its action sequences, but this fast-paced World War II thriller benefits from its efficiently economical approach".^[21] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 64 out of 100, based on 37 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[22]

Owen Gleiberman, in his review for Variety, said the film is "less a drama than a tense and sturdy diary of the logistics of battle" and "though much of the action is set in the open air of the ship's command perch, Greyhound often feels like a submarine thriller: tense, tight, boxed-in".^[23] Writing for the Chicago Tribune, Michael Phillips gave the film three out of four stars and said: "Like the canine, [Greyhound is] trim, narrow of scope, and it runs efficiently and well despite a barrage of on-screen time stamps and vessel identification markers".^[24]

David Ehrlich of IndieWire gave the film a "C−" and wrote: "A terse and streamlined dad movie that's shorter than a Sunday afternoon nap and just as exciting, Greyhound bobs across the screen like a nuanced character study that's been entombed in a 2,000-ton iron casket and set adrift over the Atlantic. The film offers a handful of brief hints at the tortured hero who Forester invented for his book ... but the whole thing is far too preoccupied with staying afloat to profile the guy at the helm in any meaningful way".^[25]

Accolades

Planned sequel

A sequel is in production.^[39]