It says a lot about the demise of the western that this is Tom Hanks’s first one. Until now, this quintessential all-American actor and the most American of genres haven’t passed within a dry gulch of each other – four outings as Sheriff Woody notwithstanding.
Paul Greengrass’s stirring flick sets the record straight in some style. Based in 1870, it has Hanks playing Captain Jefferson Kidd, a Civil War veteran who fought on the losing side and who now schleps around Texas, his trauma in tow. He travels from town to town, reading out newspaper articles to rooms full of rowdy locals. ‘I read the news to anyone with ten cents and the time to hear it’, he says.
It’s an occupation that News of the World (adapted from Paulette Jiles’s 2016 novel) has a more than passing interest in. Tales of a strike in a Virginian mine spark unrest in a group of exploited workers. Stories of emancipation and approaching railroad lines shake the trees of cruel men who like to be the ones controlling the information. Kidd, who doesn’t carry a gun, is destined for further violence whether he likes it or not. News is powerful and Kidd is its medium.
Hanks is immaculate as this world-weary wanderer, imbuing his deep sorrow and humanity. He even rides like a genre veteran (disappointingly, the horse isn’t called Bullseye). But he shares at least half the spotlight with System Crasher breakout Helena Zengel. The 12-year-old German actress is startling again here as Johanna, a girl abducted and raised by the Kiowa tribe, and then left homeless again by further bloodshed. The reluctant Kidd is ordered by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to take her cross country to her surviving uncle and aunt. Cue a road trip through copper-coloured landscape.
Stylistically, News of the World is a major departure from Greengrass’s signature jittery-cam approach, though its rhythm is just as boldly unpredictable. Some scenes stretch expansively to capture this odd couple’s growing bond; others whip by like a passing bullet.
Cinematographer Dariusz Wolski’s camera plunges into muddy cattle towns with jolting Steadicam shots, using natural light to shroud them in
a perpetual dusk full of menace.
For western-lovers,News of the World is a treat that comes bathed in composer James Newton Howard’s melancholic strings.
DIRECTOR
Paul Greengrass
RELEASE DATE
Launching on Netflix worldwide Feb 10.
