Tom Hanks, a volleyball, and an Oscar?

XX "Cast Away," Starring Tom Hanks and Helen Hunt. Directed by Robert Zemeckis. Several theaters. 143 minutes. Rated PG-13, for some profanity and strong air-crash violence.

"Cast Away" is, in many ways, a bold, adventurous bid for Oscardom. Unfortunately, what it delivers for audiences, as opposed to Oscar voters, is a little questionable.

Those of you who pay to see it will have to buy into the conceit that watching Tom Hanks alone on a desert island, talking to no one but himself and a volleyball named Wilson (really), makes for compelling drama.

If there's anyone out there who could pull off an acting feat like this, it's Hanks. (Watching, say, Kevin Costner go through the same exercise would be something akin to torture.)

As it is, Hanks is both charismatic and nuanced; he almost makes you believe the volleyball is his best friend. He again takes on the role of everyman, an average person thrown into extraordinary circumstances (e.g., "Saving Private Ryan"). In this case he's Chuck Noland, a manager for Federal Express, who by virtue of his job is a slave to the clock and his pager. He gets called away from a holiday dinner with his sweetheart (Helen Hunt) and friends for a last-minute flight to Asia. The plane goes down, Chuck is the only survivor, and he washes up on a deserted island in the Pacific, armed with little more than a life raft and a few unopened FedEx boxes.

What happens next makes up the bulk of the film - the slightly overweight, survival-skill-deficient Hanks making agonizing efforts to perform the most basic essentials of life: Eat, drink, find shelter. There's an absolutely excruciating, extended sequence of Hanks attempting to start a fire. We truly feel his frustration at his failures. But we also feel frustrated that we're spending what feels like 20 minutes watching Hanks rub two sticks together.

Even more frustrating, after so much minute detail, the film suddenly jumps ahead four years, where we meet a much thinner, hairier Hanks. We also miss what turns out to be the key emotional turning point. I won't blow it here, but why do we only learn about the most crucial moment in retrospect?

Other problems get in the way of greatness for "Cast Away." The emotional resolutions in the third act get wrapped up way too neatly, even though the filmmakers admirably avoid a Hollywood-friendly happy ending. It seems like we spent more time, and more agony, with the two sticks than we did with resolving the relationship with the sweetheart.

The weighter message seems to be about the value of time, and Hanks' mastery of it/slavery to it, but that's not a whole lot more profound than the message we get in those 10-second beer commercials where the guy on the beach throws the ringing cell phone in the water.

Ultimately, "Cast Away" is about Hanks' performance, which is still profound enough to guarantee him an Oscar nomination. And in a year where he isn't facing a whole lot of competition, he's probably going to win.