Finch

 

This is a post-apocalyptic drama which was made for the cinema but ended up on Apple TV+. And there’s a theme within it about avoiding people, which is a reason why I still haven’t returned to the cinema. It is a pretty standard story of a man who is surviving following the decline of the climate and breakdown of civilisation. And the someone, the titular Finch, is Tom Hanks—who has survived on an island with a basketball before. And he creates a robot carer, specifically because he feels as though he isn’t going to live long and he needs something to look after his dog.

In the interest of not being triggering, the dog is fine. Because when you break it down this story it is about a man who has lost everything except the dog and he is clinging on to him (the dog’s name is Goodyear and he is played by a terrier called Seamus).

The film begins with Finch working to accumulate as much information as he can prior to making a road trip to San Francisco in an 80s RV. We see him dealing with radiation sickness whilst caring for himself and for the dog, and in the company of another robot called Dewey which is funny for a couple of reasons, not least that the robot is selecting library books (which then have their spines cut off prior to scanning—society has totally gone to hell if book spines are being thrown away!)

When the robot Jeff turns up it’s kind of a jolt because his voice is quite different to the sound design prior—which seems to be a reference to other fictional computers and sound design. Jeff’s voice is like a fake Russian which is possibly a comment on where electrical stuff is manufactured in this future—and there’s some fun to be had when Finch is trying to get the thing to work. The rest is a light comedy of misunderstanding as Jeff doesn’t understand human things and especially can’t understand the bond between Finch and Goodyear. However he is programmed with Asimov’s robot rules with Finch’s fourth rule about looking after the dog even if there is no human.

Hanks obviously is great, and to see him in a broken state as we do feels like a sign of the decline of society. It was on the set on this film that he contracted COVID, becoming one of the first high-profile cases to make the news. Somehow this intimate focus on a small part of humanity: our relationship with dogs goes nicely with the desire to survive and continue our existence… it all seems more relevant and important.