Volunteers

I thought I had seen all the Tom Hanks movies, but this one must have slipped through the cracks. It is not one of his classic best, but in the right mood you might find it entertaining. We did.

Tom is the worthless ne’er-do-well son of a rich father, played nicely by George Plimpton. But he has a gambling problem, a bad one. He is into some very bad people for $14,000, which he bets double or nothing on a basketball game. He loses by one point. A huge black guy who could probably eat the defensive line for the Bears alive is angry with him already, and is eager to take $28,000 out of his hide. Dad thinks this process will teach him a lesson, so he won’t pony up the dough. Tom’s only out, it seems, is to take the ticket of a friend who is joining the Peace Corps in Thailand. (This is 1962.) He fits in very badly with these idealistic young people, but he is imperturbable. They are assigned to build a bridge over a river, but they don’t know that the local commies, the CIA, and the local opium lord all want the bridge for various reasons.

(They actually built a very, very long rope and wood suspension bridge—in Mexico, they were never anywhere hear Thailand—and blew it up, in one of many gestures toward the famous scene in The Bridge on the River Kwai.

That’s enough plot. It is intentionally farcical, nothing to take seriously anywhere in the story. (Though Sargent Shriver, head Peace Corps honcho, likened it to “spitting on the American flag.” The PC asked for changes, including not mentioning the CIA, and changing the name of the PC, but none were made. They ended up endorsing the film, which was surprisingly sensible of them.) Hanks is okay, but being an arrogant asshole is not really his sort of part. The main attraction is John Candy, as “Tom Tuttle of Tacoma, Washington!” He tells this to everyone he meets, and is always singing the Washington State fight song. He is super, super gung-ho in everything he does. The funniest bit: He is captured by the commies, who tell him they are going to brainwash him. “Go ahead and try!” he sneers. Cut to: Tom Tuttle in a Mao uniform and spouting the party line like he ate and digested the Little Red Book in one setting. Even the commies get tired of hearing their dialectic shouted in their faces. Oh, that was a funny man, and I really miss him.