Hollywood tends to end the world with either a bang or a whimper. We either go down in flames, screaming, in bombastic spectacles like Independence Day and 2012 or we are extinguished with a little more dignity and grace, contemplating the fragility of our humanity and our place in the scheme of things in films such as The Quiet Earth and Z for Zachariah. Originally entitled Bios, Miguel Sapochnik’s Finch, starring the ever-dependable Tom Hanks, falls much more squarely into this second category, delivering a poignant, touching, rather poetic – and refreshingly low-key – road movie that really does encapsulate that hoary old SF cliché “what it means to be human” and how the human spirit can be kept alive by the most remarkably mundane and unselfish dramatic imperatives. On the downside, though, the film also features a supporting robot character who often veers dangerously close to Chappie territory in being the most toe-curlingly irritating artificial intelligence in the history of movies before finding a redemption of his own.
Hanks plays Finch, one of the last men on Earth in the wake of an appalling environmental catastrophe that has turned the surface of the planet into a ferocious and inhospitable wilderness. His only company is his beloved dog. But Finch knows that his own time is running out and he finally manages to build a hugely intelligent – if initially naïve – robot to whom he can entrust the care of his dog when he dies. The robot is initially yappy and tiresome and it threatens to upend a quietly-thoughtful and unshowy post-apocalyptic movie that focuses on character and philosophy rather than action and incident – until it too slowly begins to understand its purpose and its place in the scheme of things. Their home compromised by another surface upheaval, Finch, Jeff the robot (played by Caleb Landry Jones) and the dog set off across the devastated country to San Francisco, Finch’s home… but their journey turns into a race against time as Finch is haunted by his own memories of his past failures and weaknesses and time is running out if he is to teach Jeff all he needs to know about bonding with and looking after Finch’s dog.
In many ways, Finch, due for cinema release last October but which has now largely bypassed the multiplex and found a home on Apple TV+, is a companion piece to last year’s moody George Clooney vehicle The Midnight Sky which told a similar understated story of one ailing man finding a reason to stay alive in his last days in a world no longer fit for purpose. Finch is also a story that pays only the barest lip service to the action movie genre – there’s one eerie scene here where Finch, Jeff and the dog flee a devastated city in a hurry, pursued by aggressors who we never see – because it really isn’t about the end of the world itself, more how our protagonist has come to survive it and how his priorities are no longer his own welfare but that of his four-legged companion and how, even as the light of life on Earth flickers, Finch finds a reason to carry on against all the odds just so he can leave his mortal coil safe in the knowledge that his best friend can live on without him.
Finch will probably test the patience of an audience looking for more simplistic action movie fare because it really isn’t that kind of movie. But with some stark, beautiful cinematography, another measured, everyman performance by Hanks and a story that manages to boil down the nature of humanity to its absolute essence – our need to protect those we love and cherish – Finch is a captivating, strangely beautiful and mesmeric movie that will gladden the heart even as it tells its story set at the very end of the human age on Earth. But remember to make allowances for Jeff’s childlike exuberance and keep your teeth gritted until he finally finds and grows into his own sense of purpose.
Finch is available to stream on Apple TV+
