Posted on 12/28/2020 7:40:50 AM PST by Kaslin
Beautifully shot yet muted as a drama, ‘News of the World’ brings the post-Civil War Southwest to life in the unlikely journey of a lost girl and a jaded veteran who helps her find home.
Ten years ago, auteur filmmaker brothers Joel and Ethan Coen brought a surprisingly sincere revisionist Western to the big screen over Christmas weekend. Out last weekend in theaters, “News of the World” offers a similar throwback film without quite the edge or mass appeal.
The Coens’ 2010 take on “True Grit,” a remake of the John Wayne classic, followed a grizzled U.S. Marshal (Jeff Bridges) and no-nonsense Texas Ranger (Matt Damon) who escort a farm girl across frontier terrain. It garnered ten Academy Award nominations and wide acclaim. A decade later, two Hollywood veterans are employing a similar formula for their first Western.
Director Paul Greengrass has long been distinguished for his biopic dramas, including fast-paced 9/11 thriller “Flight 93” and modern-day high-seas rescue story “Captain Phillips,” which featured Tom Hanks as the eponymous freighter captain who must retake his vessel from pirates. The top actor has become known for dozens of real-life roles, most recently in this summer’s World War II drama “Greyhound.”
Now Greengrass and Hanks reunite for “News of the World,” based on a recent best-selling novel that unfolds in post-Civil War Texas. As a newsman who travels from town to town, Hanks’s character happens upon an orphaned girl whose plight redirects him to another destination.
Fans of American Westerns will doubtless enjoy this big-budget film, a slow-moving story with visual energy thanks to top-tier behind-the-scenes talent. Shot chiefly in Sante Fe, New Mexico, cinematographer Dariusz Wolski (“Pirates of the Caribbean” series) makes sparse landscapes pop, in scenes spurred on by an understated score from composer James Newton Howard (known for “Defiance” and “The Hunger Games”).
Thematically, “News of the World” clearly wants to speak to current issues of literacy education, “fake news,” and even racial prejudice. However, the film’s sparse dialogue and lack of conflict leave its core ideas largely underdeveloped.
In the film, Hanks portrays Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a former Confederate officer and frontier journalist who stages public readings of headlines for working-class families. His discovery of an overturned covered wagon leads him to Johanna, a ten-year-old girl (Helena Zengel) who years earlier had been abducted by an American Indian tribe. In a move everyone saw coming, Tom “America’s Dad” Hanks quickly assumes a paternal role with the orphan.
Through travel documents and clues, Kidd learns of her living family members and makes this reunion his central mission. It’s a premise used to great effect in “The Mandalorian,” Disney’s hit Star Wars streaming series. While this film lacks any hyperspace travel or aliens, it play on similar themes of connection and fatherhood. Struggling to communicate with a girl who speaks no English, the war-weary veteran lights up even at small victories like learning her name.
This minimalist story approach contrasts with the whip-smart scripting of “True Grit,” where young lead Hailee Steinfeld exchanged rapid-fire barbs throughout with her adult co-stars. “News of the World” leaves charismatic Hanks to capably bear much of the plot development, as mostly silent Zengel tags along with him to grimy Old West towns.
People they encounter are carving out a hardscrabble existence following the massive death toll of the Civil War, which historians estimate at more than 600,000 men. Equal parts newsman, showman, and storyteller, Kidd uses his public news readings to educate and entertain.
News of the World Featurette - A Look Inside (2020)
By the film’s third act, viewers can tell the filmmakers cast these scenes as a metaphor for their craft. In the film’s closing minutes, an antagonist dismisses Kidd’s suggestion that his young charge be given an opportunity to read. “There is no time for stories,” the man spits back.
Such meta-themes—along with the film’s attention to issues of racial prejudice, xenophobia, and human trafficking—are reminders it springs from a novel written only four years ago. Similar to revisionist Westerns like “Dances with Wolves,” this drama strives to view the American frontier from multiple perspectives to take in a more complete story.
In an early subplot where vigilante traffickers eye Johanna as potential prey, the film’s depiction of the issue feels almost contemporary, ripped from current Pornhub-related headlines. Another central sequence finds Kidd entering a backwater settlement hostile to any outsiders, with an unelected town leader stirring up prejudice against ethnic minorities as the scapegoat for his misdeeds.
Bringing in another perspective, “News of the World” does not sugarcoat the girl’s loss of family members to a Native American raiding party. Nor does it romanticize the difficulties of frontier life, with flash floods, wagon travel, and shoot-outs depicted as perilous endeavors.
Produced by indisputably talented filmmakers and carried by a circumspect Hanks performance, “News of the World” has some charms as a window into the often-overlooked post-Civil War era. Still, if given the opportunity to see this one or rewatch 2010’s hardy “True Grit,” it wouldn’t take a duel with pistols at high noon to determine the winner.
Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, thematic material, and some language, “News of the World”
John Wayne did Red River in 1948, he did the main character quite well, then it was remade later with James Arness as the main character, I had to turn it off after about 15 minutes because I knew there was no way Arness could be as ruthful to fit into that character.
I thought Campbell was pretty bad, but he was not a deal-breaker for me. I thought Ricky Nelson was pretty bad in Rio Bravo, but not bad enough to sink the movie.
You forgot the cover of Roger Stone and the missus.
Always been a bat boy fan.
Excellent post!
Hanks is a lowlife scumbag.
Hanks is a lowlife scumbag.
Joe would love the film!
I just found out somebody remade Eastwood’s “The Beguiled”.
Why would you DO that??
/Hanks gives me the creeps
I’ve been doing a lot of genealogical research and just finished reading a history of Red Deer, Alberta near where my ancestors homesteaded in the 1880s.
This movie sounded promising at first, but the Woke Meets the American West theme leaves me cold. I want to go to movies and read books to get AWAY from Woke crap.
I’m surprised they put Tom Hanks in the star role. It would have been even more Woke if they’d put a tough frontier woman in that role.
I’ll probably watch it, but be ready to hurl at every new Woke theme that gets put on display.
I think Hanks wanted it because it had to do with little girls...
At least Glen Campbell was not in the new version to ruin the entire movie. He was NOT and actor.
Photos like that always leave me cold, too, because of their lack of realism. Riding an open wagon on rutted dusty roads or cross-country and they have on just-laundered clothes with nary a spot of dust, dirt, or grime. People traveled extremely light and had, at best, one change of clothes. A couple of weeks on the trail through the desert and scrub and you’d be covered head to toe in dirt, filth, weed stickers, and brush bits.
Three to things to look for in Westerns — is the campfire fueled by propane and not real burning wood; are the clothes dirty and threadbare; and are the characters saying “Yo...wuss up dawg?...Nuttin’, just hangin’ bro.”
**Yes 2020 political correctness in 1870 destroyed this movie! And news flash to the producer /director and cinematographer, there are NO MOUNTAINS between Wichita Falls and Dallas!! And the Hill Country is not that close to Dallas!! More like Fake News of the World !!**
Being a truck driver, I laugh about that about those movie geographical inconsistancies. But, beside that point, the realism in tv and movie making somehow requires a ‘soundtrack’ of music. I’m not mocking well playing musical instruments; it’s just that I’m a realist. In all my years of riding a horse and working/herding cattle, there was never any background music.
I agree. Never could stand the guy.
**Photos like that always leave me cold, too, because of their lack of realism.**
Oh come on man! (Heard that somewhere before)
At least the brim of his hat is a bit rumpled.
Then during the 1970s, it became common to throw TV actors into recording music albums, almost always with disastrous results. I present as examples Willie Aames, John Travolta, and the Brady Bunch.
Anyway, I liked the 2010 remake by Coen Brothers. Both that and the original version are classics.
Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford are starting to look like brothers. I guess all grumpy old men look alike.
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