by Daniel Stephens

Created on: July 15, 2009   Last Updated: September 05, 2011

Volunteers (Nicholas Meyer, USA, 1984)

Dir. Nicholas Meyer; starring Tom Hanks, John Candy, Rita Wilson, Tim Thomerson, Gedde Watanabe

Nicholas Meyer's Volunteers is a typical eighties movie for Tom Hanks. It epitomizes his work during the period because the film wouldn't work without him. Essentially, a loose comedy about Peace Corps workers building a bridge in Thailand, the film features a battle with imperialistic oppresses and the constant struggle of the culture-language gap. The Americans are led by a largely self-centered character (played by Tom Hanks) who gets by thanks in no small part to the riches of his mother and father. Had Hanks, who could make a sadistic criminal likeable, not played the part, the film would fall down on its wayward plot, overzealous score, and grating reliance on stereotypical jokes.

But, somehow, Tom Hanks makes it work. And that is the exceptional thing about him, especially during the eighties when he practically played the same character in each of his movies. The only difference being the female actress chosen to be his muse. But that shouldn't take anything away from the bumbling caricatures he created during the decade. And despite his Lawrence Bourne the Third in Volunteers struggling to maintain the upper-crust American-British inflections of an accent all too infused by his native west coast Californian, Hanks is the main draw here.

We first meet Hanks' over-confident Larry Bourne at the poker table. He's got himself into debt with the wrong people but it doesn't seem to faze him. He's relaxed enough to make his current girlfriend scream in orgasmic pleasure as his college roommate sits at the closed dorm room door in a sleeping bag waiting for his friend to finish. Bourne, deciding the best course of action is to double-or-nothing his debt on a sports bet, ends up losing and being pursued by his creditor's heavies. As his friend and roommate is about to join the Peace Corps and jet off to the other side of the world, Bourne persuades him to swap places in order to save his own skin. With the persuasive techniques of - yes, you can have my girlfriend, and yes, you can have my car - Bourne flies off to Thailand to help his fellow do-gooders build a bridge.

Volunteers begins with Blue Moon playing over black and white images of "great" Americans juxtaposed with tyrannical foreign leaders. The message is clear but you wonder if it's punching far beyond its weight. Meyer uses the culture gap stereotypes too often -

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