NEWS OF THE WORLD (2020) ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
D: Paul Greengrass
Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Elizabeth Marvel,
Mare Winingham, Ray McKinnon, Fred Hechinger,
Michael Angelo Covino, Thomas Francis Murphy
As much as anything, "News of the World" is a movie about stories. Tom Hanks plays Captain Thomas Jefferson Kidd (yes, Captain Kidd), a Civil War veteran traveling from town to town in 1870 Texas, reading stories out of newspapers to folks who presumably don't have access to CNN or NPR. Out on the trail one day, he comes across a young girl (Helena Zengel), who's just spent six years living with the Kiowa, after a raid that killed her family. Now an Army raid has killed her Kiowa family, and the kid is lost. And wild. Unable to find anybody who will take her in, the newsman reluctantly embarks on a 400-mile journey to her only remaining relatives, an aunt and uncle who live down toward San Antonio. It's a perilous adventure, and there's an old-fashioned, storybook feel to the way it plays out. The captain turns out to be just as damaged and haunted as the girl is, and a brief exchange along the way is revealing: He tells her (in English) that the only way to face the future is to forget the past. She replies (in Kiowa) that the only way to move on is to remember it. Hanks is good - you expect that - and Zengel doesn't miss a step keeping up with him. Their evolving relationship and the way they play off each other are the heart and soul of the movie. It's an odyssey, really, and a reminder that western stories aren't just our national myth. They're our national fairy tale.
