Cast Away is a 2000 film by 20th Century Fox and DreamWorks about a FedEx employee who is stranded on a deserted island after his plane goes down over the South Pacific. The plot is very loosely based on the novel Robinson Crusoe.

In the opening scene, a FedEx truck rolls past a large sign reading "Dick-Bettina" to a ranch-style Texas residence where the driver takes for delivery a FedEx package marked with a custom logo in the form of angels' wings. These wings are also seen as freestanding sculptures on and within the property. The woman sending the package, an artist in a welder's suit, tells the driver she will have another one for him to take that coming Thursday. We see the package delivered all the way to a residence in Moscow, Russia, to a man in a cowboy hat and robe. A Russian woman who is with the man, apparently on intimate terms, asks, "Who is it from?". He replies, "My wife".

The next scenes follow Chuck Noland (Tom Hanks), a highly efficient FedEx executive, as he attempts to improve the performance of FedEx's Moscow branch. He returns to the U.S. (Tennessee), where he is trying to guide a relationship with his girlfriend Kelly Frears (Helen Hunt) toward marriage. It is obvious that Chuck's harried professional life with FedEx is making it difficult to progress with Kelly. Their Christmas together is interrupted by a last minute business trip. They exchange presents in the car on the way to the FedEx hub, Kelly giving him a family heirloom timepiece holding a photo of herself and Chuck giving her a number of joke presents before solemly offering her an engagement ring. She is too nervous to open it and he walks off to the FedEx jet saying, "I'll be right back".

Somewhere over the southern Pacific ocean the flight goes disastrously wrong, crashing into the nighttime sea in flames. Saved by an inflatable raft, Chuck is stranded alone on a deserted tropical island. After landing and ascertaining the island is uninhabited, Chuck's most immediate need is drinking water, which he satisfies by drinking coconut water and later by storing rain water in the discarded husks. His second immediate need is shelter, which he secures by draping his raft over palmtree trunks and, later, by discovering small caves in the island rock. Chuck's third task is food. He attempts to fish, but is wholly unsuccessful at the start. As time progresses, his fishing skills steadily increase. Shortly after his first fishing attempt, he finds a compelling need to produce fire, which after great effort, many attempts, and some injury he succeeds in doing.

Fortunately for Chuck a few FedEx packages from the plane and the body of one of the pilots wash up on the shore shortly after he lands on the island. After some refitting, Chuck dons the pilot's rubber-soled shoes and improvises some tools from items in the washed-up packages, in particular a pair of gift ice-skates. Chuck also finds a small pocket flashlight amongst the pilot's possessions. Around this time, at night, he sees a light on the horizon, presumably from a search party, and having realised the futility of attracting attention using the flashlight, he takes to the sea on the tiny life raft, which he has repaired. However, he is thwarted by the high surf around the island's reef.

As time passes it seems Chuck has risen to the challenges of physical survival but it is also evident he is in a fragile mental state, relying heavily on his memories of Kelly, whose picture-in-a-timepiece he now wears round his neck.

One of the FedEx packages bears the distinctive angels' wings custom logo observed in the first scene. It is the package the artist woman mentioned she would be sending on "Thursday". For some reason, this is the only package Chuck does not open.

Four years later, a piece of a port-a-john appears on the shore. Chuck, now with a beard, long hair and wearing a loincloth, his body much leaner and weatherbeaten, uses this fragment as a sail for the raft he makes to leave the island. Chuck is waiting for the winds to shift so he can travel to the South Pacific's shipping lanes in the hopes that a passing ship will find him. It is also revealed that in previous years he has considered suicide as an alternative to escape from the island.

After construction of the raft, Chuck sets off into the ocean, desperately hoping for rescue. By raising his makeshift sail at a precisely timed moment in the curl of a wave, he breaks free of the rough shore surf that foiled him years earlier. After sailing for an unknown period of time over a distance of about 600 miles—when he is on the verge of death—he is rescued by a passing cargo freighter.

On returning home, Chuck must come to terms with the fact that almost everyone he knew has irrevocably changed, including Kelly who has since married and had a child with another man. Kelly revealed that the island where Chuck was marooned is located 500 miles south of the Cook Islands. After a dramatic scene in which the pair comes close to resuming the romance, Chuck reconciles himself to "losing her all over again". In the film's short philosophical coda, Chuck explains to his close friend, "I've got to keep breathing. Because tomorrow, the sun will rise. Who knows what the tide could bring?"

The film ends with Chuck at a remote crossroads after delivering the one unopened package from the island to the residence from the first scene (due to the long passage of time, the package is being returned to sender). The sign over the residence has had the "Dick" portion of the "Dick-Bettina" name removed, but the angels' wings sculptures are still there. No one is home so Chuck leaves the package propped in the screen door with a note, which reads "This package saved my life". Chuck returns to the crossroads a short distance away, stopping his car to study a map. The artist woman, pretty, friendly, and around his own age, drives up in an antique truck and says, "You look lost." She describes where all the roads branching from the intersection lead. He thanks her, and as she drives away, Chuck notices the angels' wings painted on the back of her truck. A long close up of Chuck smiling directly into the camera closes the film.

One of Cast Away's notable "characters" is "Wilson," a volleyball from Wilson Sporting Goods (in real life, the dominant manufacturer of volleyballs). The volleyball is found in one of the FedEx boxes. When Chuck tries to make a fire and cuts his hand, he angrily palms the volleyball and throws it. The blood from his wound makes the hand-shaped mark that forms the ball's "face". This volleyball plays the role of a mute, infinitely patient, non-living listener in the movie, providing Chuck with a companion for the 1,500 days he spends on the island (one might go so far as to suggest that Wilson is Friday to Chuck's Robinson Crusoe). Wilson is also slightly modified by Noland sometime during the four-year gap; a section of the volleyball above the face has been removed and a coif of leaves has been inserted, serving as hair. From a theatrical standpoint, Wilson also serves to realistically simulate dialogue in a single-person situation. Tragically, Chuck loses Wilson after the volleyball washes off the raft and drifts too far out to sea for Chuck to be able to retrieve it. Towards the film's end, Noland is seen driving with a brand new volleyball sitting in the passenger seat.

Cast Away is well-known for its prominent product placement marketing. In this case the movie benefited two major brands: Wilson and FedEx. However, contrary to popular belief, FedEx did not pay the filmmakers anything for their presence in the movie, a fact which the director has made clear in a number of interviews.

At the time of the movie's release, Wilson Sporting Goods launched its own joint promotion centered around the fact that one of its products was "co-starring" with Tom Hanks.

Despite the fact that the plot revolves around the tragic crash of a FedEx plane, the company correctly guessed that the movie would not damage its reputation. FedEx cooperated closely with the filmmakers to ensure that all FedEx materials seen in the movie were authentic. Chuck's "coming-home" scene was filmed on location at FedEx's home facilities in Memphis, Tennessee. According to an interview on the DVD release of the film, FedEx Corporation did not pay for product-placement rights. However, the extensive support that the company provided to the film can be considered a form of payment for the placement.

Some commentators claim that the use of the FedEx brand and logo in its present form is an anachronism, since the first half of the film was set in 1995 while FedEx Corporation was officially titled FDX Corp. at the time. (FedEx Corporation changed to its present name in 2000, when Noland returned) However, the brand "FedEx" began to be used by the overnight-courier division of the company in 1994. The complete absence of references in the film to the old names that had been recently in use could still be considered a flaw or a form of marketing benefit.

Although most notable for its lack of score, while Chuck is on the island and there is no music at all until he escapes. The film's minimal score was composed by Alan Silvestri for which he won a Grammy in 2002. A pseudo exception to this could be said to be the scene where Tom Hanks' character creates fire, in which he sings "Light My Fire" by The Doors, among others.