For him it’s an alcohol-free last-chance saloon to pay for his daughter to go back to college. In barely a minute it’s established that Alan, divorced and broke and with a horrible ex-wife, is heading to Saudi Arabia to secure a deal to supply the tech for a new city in the desert. To the backing of Talking Heads, Boston salaryman Alan Clay (Hanks) karaokes “Once in a Lifetime” in a harum-scarum nightmare sequence featuring cartoon SFX and a juddering rollercoastcam. But in his wonderfully alive opening sequence (see clip overleaf) scriptwriter/director Tom Tykwer seems determined to lassoo lightning. Eggers, author of the super-ludic memoir A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius and creator of McSweeney’s magazine, is not the type of writer whose prose personality just leaps onto the screen. The source material is the much praised 2012 novel by Dave Eggers. In the meantime, here’s A Hologram for the King in which Hanks is very much Hanks and the main reason to pay up. Stewart shocked fans when he played a vengeful man-hunter in Winchester '73, and maybe it’s time Hanks defibrillated us all by playing a cold-blooded killer. His everyman allure makes him today’s only equivalent to James Stewart. Tom Hanks is reaching world treasure status, like some third-century heritage site protected by UNESCO.
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