Tom Hanks rarely plays morally ambiguous characters; you can probably count on one hand the number of times he’s played an outright antagonist. However, one of Hanks’ most interesting performances came at a time when he was at the peak of his success. He could have chosen to make the kind of movies that audiences were accustomed to seeing him in, but he chose to star in the sophomore feature of a breakout director, where he played a Mafia fixer who goes on a revenge mission against his boss, with his son tagging along for the dangerous ride. The movie was released in 2002, the same year as the far more accessible crime caper Catch Me if You Can, directed by Steven Spielberg and headlined by Leonardo DiCaprio.
Hanks was coming off two highly acclaimed performances in Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away. A decade had passed since he won two back-to-back Oscars for Philadelphia and Forrest Gump, and was famously snubbed for his work in Apollo 13. Despite his prior recognition for Saving Private Ryan and Cast Away, Hanks did not receive an Oscar nomination for the 2002 movie. He wouldn’t receive another Oscar nomination until 2020’s A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood. However, his 2002 movie has emerged as a cult classic in the last two decades, and his performance in it is now regarded as one of his finest.
Collider Exclusive · Oscar Best Picture Quiz Which Oscar Best Picture Is Your Perfect Movie? Parasite · Everything Everywhere · Oppenheimer · Birdman · No Country
Five Oscar Best Picture winners. Five completely different visions of what cinema can be — and what it can do to you. One of them is the film that was made for the way your mind works. Ten questions will figure out which one.
🪜Parasite
🌀Everything Everywhere
☢️Oppenheimer
🐦Birdman
🪙No Country for Old Men
01
What kind of film experience do you actually want? The best movies don’t just entertain — they leave something behind.
02
Which idea grabs you most in a film? Great films are driven by a central obsession. What’s yours?
03
How do you like your story told? Form is content. The way a story is shaped changes what it means.
04
What makes a truly great antagonist? The opposition defines the protagonist. What kind of opposition fascinates you?
05
What do you want from a film’s ending? The final note is the one that lingers. What do you want it to sound like?
06
Which setting pulls you in most? Where a film takes place shapes everything — mood, stakes, what’s even possible.
07
What cinematic craft impresses you most? Every great film has a signature — a technical or artistic element that makes it unmistakable.
08
What kind of main character do you root for? The protagonist is the lens. Who you choose to follow says something about you.
09
How do you feel about a film that takes its time? Pace is a choice. Some films sprint; others let tension accumulate slowly, deliberately.
10
What do you want to feel walking out of the cinema? The best films leave a mark. What kind of mark do you want?
The Academy Has Decided Your Perfect Film Is…
Your answers have pointed to one Oscar Best Picture winner above all others. This is the film that was made for the way your mind works.
Parasite
You are drawn to films that operate on multiple levels simultaneously — that begin in one genre and quietly, brilliantly migrate into another. Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite is a film about class, desire, and the architecture of inequality that manages to be darkly funny, deeply suspenseful, and genuinely shocking across a single extraordinary running time. Your instinct is for cinema that hides its true intentions until the moment it’s ready to reveal them. Parasite is exactly that — a film that rewards close attention and punishes assumptions, right up to its devastating final image.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
You want it all — and this film gives you all of it. The Daniels’ Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the most maximalist films ever made: action comedy, multiverse sci-fi, family drama, existential crisis, and a genuinely earned emotional core that sneaks up on you amid the chaos. You are someone who responds to ambition, who doesn’t want cinema to choose between being entertaining and being meaningful. This film refuses that choice entirely. It is overwhelming by design, and its overwhelming nature is precisely the point — because the feeling of being crushed by infinite possibility is exactly what it’s about.
Oppenheimer
You are drawn to cinema on a grand scale — films that understand history not as a backdrop but as a force, and that place their characters inside that force and watch what happens. Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is a film about the terrifying gap between what we can do and what we should do, told with the full weight of one of the most consequential moments in human history behind it. You want your films to feel important without feeling self-important — to earn their ambition through sheer craft and the gravity of their subject. Oppenheimer does exactly that. It is enormous, complicated, and refuses easy comfort.
Birdman
You are drawn to films that foreground their own construction — that make the how of the filmmaking part of the what it’s about. Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, shot to appear as a single continuous take, is cinema examining itself through the cracked mirror of a fading actor’s ego. You respond to formal daring, to the feeling that a film is doing something that probably shouldn’t be possible. Michael Keaton’s performance and Emmanuel Lubezki’s restless camera create something genuinely unlike anything else — a film that is simultaneously about creativity, relevance, self-destruction, and the impossibility of ever truly knowing if your work means anything at all.
No Country for Old Men
You are drawn to cinema that trusts silence, that refuses to explain itself, and that treats dread as a form of meaning. The Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men is a film about the arrival of a new kind of evil — implacable, arbitrary, and utterly indifferent to the moral frameworks we use to make sense of the world. It is one of the most formally controlled films ever made, and its controlled restraint is what makes it so terrifying. You want your films to haunt you, not comfort you. You are not interested in resolution if resolution would be dishonest. No Country for Old Men is honest in a way that most cinema never dares to be.
Here’s How Long You Have Left To Watch Tom Hanks’ Crime Drama on Peacock
We’re talking, of course, about Road to Perdition. Directed by Sam Mendesas his follow-up to American Beauty, Road to Perdition remains one of the most unlikely comic book adaptations of all time. It also featured Paul Newman, Stanley Tucci, Daniel Craig, Jude Law, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. The film grossed more than $180 million worldwide against a reported budget of $80 million, with praise going to the performances, the cinematography by the late Conrad L. Hall, and the original score by Thomas Newman. Road to Perdition now holds a “Certified Fresh” 82% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, where the critics’ consensus reads, “Somber, stately, and beautifully mounted, Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition is a well-crafted mob movie that explores the ties between fathers and sons.” The movie is currently streaming on Peacock in the United States, but it will be removed from the platform on May 1. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
