Tom Hanks names one of his favourite movies that sadly “no one references”
Over the past three decades, Tom Hanks has maintained a steady presence in blockbuster dramas, scooping barrow-loads of respect to become one of America’s most cherished actors. His first significant break came with 1988’s Big, the classic fantasy comedy directed by Penny Marsh, but it wasn’t until the early 1990s that Hanks had top-flight directors tracking his every move.
An appearance in Philadelphia opposite Denzel Washington in 1993 and the following year, Forrest Gump saw the Californian actor win his only two Academy Awards to date, both for ‘Best Actor’. The 1995 ceremony saw Hanks become only the second actor, behind Spencer Tracy, to win two consecutive ‘Best Actor’ Oscars.
After filling his trophy cabinet, Hanks maintained a constant flow of applause through the turn of the century, appearing in a wealth of successful films from the Toy Story franchise to The Green Mile and Captain Phillips thereafter. Even in comparison to those of his fellow A-listers, Hanks’ filmography is nothing short of humbling.
Although his fans find it near-impossible to single out a favourite Hanks picture, the man himself has managed to file it down to three. Appearing on The Bill Simmons Podcast in 2021, Hanks called A League of Their Own, Cast Away and Cloud Atlas his personal favourites.
However, in January 2023, he discussed a fourth that he felt slipped under the radar unfairly. When the ReelBlend Podcast host mentioned his love for the 2002 movie Road to Perdition, Hanks replied: “You just gave me chills because I got news for ya, for one reason or another, no one references Road to Perdition. And that was an incredibly important movie for me to go through.”
Hanks starred in the Sam Mendes direction as early 1930s mob enforcer and family man Michael Sullivan. Although the crime drama was critically favoured, it was expected to incite a more seismic global reaction with Hanks’ stellar performance alongside Paul Newman, Daniel Craig and Jude Law.
“You have me – ‘Don Moustache’ with a hat on – in it,” Hanks joked in reference to his facial hair in the movie. “But you also have two guys who turned out to be two of the biggest motion picture presences in the history of the industry with Jude Law and [Daniel] Craig. And [Sullivan] killed both of [their characters]!”
“The logic of everything he does and how he says it and how he experiences things and sees them for the first time, that’s high country as far as I’m concerned. It doesn’t matter if it’s been viewed upon as being a quote-on-quote’ success,’ it’s in the zeitgeist, and that’s the only thing that matters.”
“If somebody else chooses the movies, it would just be the hits, you know, the ones that play every Christmas,” Hanks continued to explain. “There’s a number of things that I would say that I got to go back to and delve deep in the realm of what I thought was presence and authenticity that was very, very particular to those specific characters in those specific movies…I would say Road to Perdition would be one of those where I would just have to say, ‘Please look at the quiet here.'”
Watch the trailer for Road to Perdition below.
