Tom Hanks’ Underrated 2021 Film Showcases His Remarkable Acting Skills

For as long as most of us can remember, Tom Hanks has been one of the most impressive, accomplished, and beloved actors in Hollywood. From romantic comedies like Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail to dramas like Forrest Gump and Apollo 13 to comedies like Big and Toy Story, he’s always incredible.

Tom Hanks is someone who can deliver the goods regardless of the genre. In fact, he’s so good that he’s often at his best when he’s on the screen all alone. It has become something of a staple of his filmography and he showcased that ability in Finch, a hidden gem from 2021.

Finch Is An Underrated Movie In Tom Hanks’ Filmography

Finch is a Tom Hanks movie that not a lot of people talk about or even know about. It is an Apple TV+ original film that takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. The Earth is nearly uninhabitable at this point and the story centers on an aging survivor who builds a robot to care for his dog when he dies.

Hanks plays the titular Finch and, as usual, puts on a quality performance. While reviews for the movie weren’t sparkling as is often the case with a lot of Hanks’ best projects, critics still appreciated it. The film holds a 74% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising his performance even if the story isn’t wildly original.

Tom Hanks Is Basically All Alone In Finch

Tom Hanks tends to do some of his best work when he’s mostly on the screen by himself. Finch mostly has him doing just that, as he shares the screen with a CGI robot and a dog. Caleb Landry Jones is excellent as the robot Jeff and Seamus the dog is great as Goodyear, but Hanks is the only human.

Thankfully, Hanks is incredibly charismatic and manages to captivate the viewer on his own. While his interactions with both Jeff and Goodyear are touching, they wouldn’t work nearly as well if it weren’t for the acting capabilities of Hanks. In a lot of ways, it’s his best performance of the 2020s, even including Elvis.

Acting Mostly Alone Is One Of Tom Hanks’ Best Abilities

Not many actors could pull off performing all alone on the big screen as well as Tom Hanks does. Interestingly, it has actually become one of his greatest traits on film as he’s done it multiple times and delivered in spades in each occurrence. They make up some of Hanks’ best movies, which is saying something.

The most famous instance of Tom Hanks doing some acting all alone was in Cast Away. The 2000 movie, which became a streaming hit in 2025, sees him play Chuck Noland, a FedEx worker who gets stranded on an island in the South Pacific and must survive there over the course of several years.

Hanks is remarkable in Cast Away, especially when we watch him adapt to being alone. He manages to use his acting skills to get the audience emotionally invested in the volleyball that he turned into his friend. In a career filled with stellar performances, Cast Away might be Hanks at his best.

The actor is also relatively alone for a lot of The Terminal. In it, he plays Viktor Navorski, an Eastern European man who gets stuck at JFK airport for nearly a year when his country goes to war during his flight. Although there are always people at the terminal with him, Hanks is often alone on screen.

It’s engaging to see him try to figure out how to make life work at the airport, especially before he learns English. Whether it’s finding out how to get money for food or the artwork he does overnight at a closed-off section of the airport, Hanks is great. These films set the tone for his performance in Finch.