Name: 'News of the World' Review: Tom Hanks Is the Captain Again in Paul Greengrass' Modest Western
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'News of the World' Review: Tom Hanks Is the Captain Again in Paul Greengrass' Modest Western

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Known for the&nbsp;visceral,&nbsp;“shaky-cam”&nbsp;immediacy of&nbsp;a&nbsp;vérité&nbsp;style&nbsp;that’s proven bracingly&nbsp;chaotic&nbsp;in some movies (“Captain Phillips,” “United 93”) and&nbsp;utterly&nbsp;nauseating in others (“The Green Zone”),&nbsp;director&nbsp;&nbsp;might seem&nbsp;ill-suited to direct a Western — to work in that most sweeping and stoic of American genres. But “” isn’t much interested in&nbsp;telling a story about the way this country tends to&nbsp;burnish&nbsp;its&nbsp;bloodiest chapters&nbsp;into myth.Adapted from Paulette Jiles’ novel of the same name,&nbsp;this weary&nbsp;and unvarnished road trip through Reconstruction-era Texas tells the story of two&nbsp;lost&nbsp;souls who are struggling to&nbsp;free themselves from&nbsp;their&nbsp;memories&nbsp;and find a way to become whole in a dusty nation that’s never been exactly generous with its healing.&nbsp;If&nbsp;Greengrass’&nbsp;broadly&nbsp;entertaining&nbsp;(if gallingly relevant) film&nbsp;is a bit too soft&nbsp;and spread&nbsp;thin to hit with the emotional force that it could,&nbsp;so much of its&nbsp;simple power is owed to the grounded nature of&nbsp;the director’s approach, which allows&nbsp;these&nbsp;desperate characters to feel as if they’re&nbsp;trying to escape the&nbsp;very&nbsp;genre that threatens to define them forever.It&nbsp;also doesn’t hurt&nbsp;that&nbsp;Greengrass hired&nbsp;director of photography Dariusz Wolski — a Ridley Scott regular —&nbsp;to steady&nbsp;his&nbsp;hand and&nbsp;help him&nbsp;find a happy medium between “Bloody Sunday” and “The Searchers.”&nbsp;“News of the World” might wagon over some rough terrain on its 400-mile&nbsp;odyssey from Wichita Falls to Castroville, but&nbsp;there’s no reason&nbsp;a&nbsp;nice&nbsp;Western starring&nbsp;dad mode&nbsp;&nbsp;as a haunted Civil War vet should require a barf bag&nbsp;because of its camerawork.&nbsp;Lucky for we queasy sorts, the rest of this&nbsp;movie is&nbsp;also restrained in a way that allows&nbsp;for&nbsp;its potentially mawkish premise to unfold with easy grace, and for its&nbsp;unmissable commentary on today’s&nbsp;America to&nbsp;feel&nbsp;more inevitable than opportunistic.Time is a flat circle that we tend to perceive as a straight line,&nbsp;but&nbsp;Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Hanks)&nbsp;is afraid of what might happen if he stops moving forward.&nbsp;Schlepping&nbsp;from one Texas border town to another like an old shark that’s outlived its appetite,&nbsp;the bearded journeyman travels around&nbsp;with a sheaf of newspapers in tow and reads their stories to&nbsp;whatever crowds he can find for 10 cents a&nbsp;head (roughly $2 at the current rate). But&nbsp;Kidd is more Tom Hanks than Walter Cronkite, and so he&nbsp;tempers the political stuff&nbsp;that might enflame his&nbsp;agitated Confederate audiences&nbsp;with other morsels that might inspire a feeling of solidarity with their fellow&nbsp;man.Some of those tidbits are as grim as an outbreak of meningitis, while others are Tom Sawyer-like tales about men showing up to their own funerals and such. Telling other people’s stories&nbsp;prevents him from having to confront his own, and Kidd’s silence on the matter leaves us to&nbsp;guess at the&nbsp;horrors he saw (and likely perpetuated) in the Civil&nbsp;War and draw certain assumptions about why he’s not&nbsp;with his wife in San Antonio.&nbsp;It’s hard for a man to&nbsp;find peace&nbsp;in a country that refuses to stop fighting with itself, or to heal in a country that can’t help but pick at its scabs.It can be just as hard for&nbsp;a pre-teen&nbsp;girl to do the&nbsp;same, though Cicada&nbsp;(“System Crasher” star Helena Zengel)&nbsp;is one of the&nbsp;only&nbsp;10-year-olds&nbsp;who might be able to recognize Kidd’s demons.&nbsp;They meet by chance on a dirt road somewhere, as Kidd comes across the lynched body of a Black serviceman left behind as a warning for&nbsp;other former slaves and&nbsp;any Northerners&nbsp;who might be sympathetic to their cause; the only Black character in a movie that’s narrowly&nbsp;focused on&nbsp;nice white people who don’t identify with their&nbsp;own kind.Cicada — a&nbsp;headstrong beanpole&nbsp;known as Johanna Leonberger before&nbsp;the fair-skinned blonde&nbsp;was taken in by the Kiowa tribe who killed her German immigrant birth parents&nbsp;—&nbsp;certainly falls into that category.&nbsp;Cicada’s&nbsp;identity is as complicated and unsettled as that of the country around her, and her past stained with&nbsp;so much of its violence. She’s an orphan twice over by the time&nbsp;Kidd&nbsp;reluctantly agrees to pick up where the&nbsp;murdered&nbsp;serviceman left off and deliver the girl to her aunt and uncle. He doesn’t know it yet, but they’re both going in the same direction.It goes without saying that Hanks —&nbsp;peerless as ever, and&nbsp;the captain now once more —&nbsp;is&nbsp;excellent&nbsp;at playing Kidd’s tortured dignity,&nbsp;and so indivisibly humane that&nbsp;it’s hard to recognize the role he served in the Confederacy&nbsp;(a shot of Hanks squinting into a periwinkle sunset or blowing dust off an old cup is all it takes&nbsp;for Kidd’s heartache to resonate as if it were your own).&nbsp;The&nbsp;movie needs you to take it for granted that Kidd rejected slavery even as he slaughtered innocent men to defend it, and&nbsp;you do, but the character is so palpably cursed and unable to forgive himself that it doesn’t&nbsp;quite&nbsp;feel as if&nbsp;Greengrass and Luke Davies’ script is letting him off the hook&nbsp;that easy.Cicada, or Johanna, or whatever it’s ultimately right to call her threads a similar needle between archetype and specificity.&nbsp;The girl only speaks Kiowa, and she behaves according to the customs&nbsp;of&nbsp;her adoptive tribe, but&nbsp;the movie never&nbsp;mistakes&nbsp;her differences for “wildness” in the way that some of its duller characters might.&nbsp;Zengel isn’t feral, even when she’s playing afraid; her&nbsp;performance is smart and heartsick from the very beginning, and the language barrier doesn’t&nbsp;blunt our sense that she longs to reunite with the Kiowa despite understanding that she could never be one of them&nbsp;(less certain is&nbsp;Greengrass’ decision to keep the indigenous people at a ghostly remove,&nbsp;like the elves migrating towards the Undying Lands in “The Lord of the Rings”).Hanks and Zengel inhabit their characters with such mottled clarity that “News of the World”&nbsp;can&nbsp;speed&nbsp;through&nbsp;a lot of the cringe-worthy cliches that such a mismatched pair&nbsp;must&nbsp;survive on their way to becoming friends (or family).&nbsp;At an all-too-recognizable time when everyone in America seems to&nbsp;be scared of&nbsp;each other, Kidd and Cicada&nbsp;tap into a mutual rootlessness; they’re both looking for a home&nbsp;they can keep,&nbsp;even if they&nbsp;can’t speak to what that might entail.&nbsp;The bond between them is limited by&nbsp;the narrow road it travels, but at least there&nbsp;aren’t&nbsp;any painfully drawn-out&nbsp;scenes of&nbsp;Cicada trying to run away or anything like that,&nbsp;while&nbsp;the&nbsp;obligatory&nbsp;gun fight&nbsp;that&nbsp;bonds them together&nbsp;is&nbsp;so&nbsp;drawn-out and well-staged that it transcends the raw utility of its place in this story (it’s enough to&nbsp;overlook&nbsp;the dreadful CGI boulder&nbsp;that rolls through the middle of the sequence).“News of the World” travels fast — fast enough that you can literally see the wheels coming off Kidd’s wagon — and the A1 story it tells on the way there seldom&nbsp;digs&nbsp;much deeper than a good headline. While the&nbsp;detours offer&nbsp;a&nbsp;more complete picture&nbsp;of a country divided against itself (brace for the lengthy pitstop in a town ruled by a self-appointed&nbsp;business king who publishes&nbsp;his own newspapers), the film only moves forward on the strength of its moral velocity, and it lacks the muscle needed to&nbsp;reach the end of the journey without getting tired.The bumpy road back to themselves finds Kidd and Cicada forging an uneven path through some new memories — a path draped in the dull colors of real life and potholed by actors with great faces, all of whom get to shine for a scene or two before the movie rolls along. The best of these cameos belongs to the great Bill Camp, who Greengrass saves the latter for a third act scene that shows how two great performers can elevate an exposition dump into an emotional gut-punch. These are the moments where “News of the World” is at its most urgent — when this bittersweet but richly sentimental Western pauses to reflect on the double-edged power of the stories we tell ourselves, and the power that telling them to each other gives us to change what happens in the next chapter. Everything else is just copy.Universal Pictures will release “News of the World” in theaters on Christmas Day.&nbsp;As new movies open in theaters during the COVID-19 pandemic, IndieWire will continue to review them whenever possible. We encourage readers to follow the&nbsp;safety precautions&nbsp;provided by CDC and health authorities. Additionally, our coverage will provide alternative viewing options whenever they are available.Sign Up:This Article is related to: , and tagged , , ,JavaScript is required to load the comments.Loading comments...Get The Latest IndieWire Alerts And Newsletters Delivered Directly To Your InboxListen to these IndieWire podcasts.Interviews with leading film and TV creators about their process and craft.ad

Known for the&nbsp;visceral,&nbsp;“shaky-cam”&nbsp;immediacy of&nbsp;a&nbsp;vérité&nbsp;style&nbsp;that’s proven bracingly&nbsp;chaotic&nbsp;in some movies (“Captain Phillips,” “United 93”) and&nbsp;utterly&nbsp;nauseating in others (“The Green Zone”),&nbsp;director&nbsp;&nbsp;might seem&nbsp;ill-suited to direct a Western — to work in that most sweeping and stoic of American genres. But “” isn’t much interested in&nbsp;telling a story about the way this country tends to&nbsp;burnish&nbsp;its&nbsp;bloodiest chapters&nbsp;into myth.Adapted from Paulette Jiles’ novel of the same...

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David Ehrlich

IndieWire (sometimes stylized as indieWIRE or Indiewire) is a film industry and review website that was established in 1996. The site's focus is independent film. As of  2016, IndieWire is a subsidiary of Penske Media. It has a staff of about 20, including Publisher James Israel, Editor-in-Chief Dana Harris, Chief Critic Eric Kohn, and Editor-at-Large Anne Thompson.

'News of the World' Review: Tom Hanks Is the Captain Again in Paul Greengrass' Modest Western

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