News of the World

NEWS OF THE WORLD (12)

D: Paul Greengrass

Universal / Perfect World / Playtone / Pretty Pictures (Gary Goetzman, Gail Mutrux & Gregory Goodman)

US 🇺🇸 2020

118 mins

Western

W: Paul Greengrass & Luke Davies [based on the novel by Paulette Jiles]

DP: Dariusz Wolski

Ed: William Goldenberg

Mus: James Newton Howard

PD: David Crank

Cos: Mark Bridges

Tom Hanks (Captain Kidd), Helena Zengel (Johanna Leonberger), Michael Angelo Covino (Almay), Ray McKinnon (Simon Boudlin), Mare Winningham (Boris Boudlin)

Stop the press! Tom Hanks stars in this Western as a retired civil war captain who rides through Texas reading the news to the townsfolk, upon his travels he happens upon a young white girl who can only speak the language of Kiowa.

Discovering that the young girl has an aunt and uncle in the state, he attempts to deliver her, meeting a handful of undesirable characters along the way.

Though Tom Hanks delivers yet another dependable performance, he is most certainly upstaged by German actress Helena Zengel, who makes her first appearance in an American film here.

Paul Greengrass captures the atmosphere perfectly, helped by the excellent cinematography, production design and James Newton Howard’s stirring music score.

It’s unfortunate that the film forewent its cinema release and was released straight to Netflix due to the Covid-19 pandemic, as this is a film with such scale and scope that it would certainly have been worth catching on the big screen.

8/10