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News of the World

Posted on May 4, 2021May 31, 2021 by Village Vidiot

  “News of the World,” May 4, 2021 (2020), DVD with attached special features. This is my third western in a month after years of not watching one.  Quite a binge for me.  Tom Hanks and the amazing new young German actress Helena Zengel star in, and make this underappreciated and beautifully filmed Paul Greengrass film worth watching.  It is 1870 and Texas is anything but reconstructed after the Civil War.  It remains under federal control, having not adopted the 13th, 14th, or 15th amendments to the US Constitution.  This is the story of Hanks’s Captain Jefferson Kidd as he takes on the obligation of returning a young girl Johanna (Zengel) to family.  Kidd, a former Confederate captain, makes his living going from town to town and reading the news of the world to these isolated area.  Johanna had been living with Kiowa peoples following the killing of her family.  The killing of her Kiowa family means she has to be returned to her only known kin, and the black man charged with that task is lynched.   The journey of these two lost people pits them against the darkness of the times in Texas.   While parts of the story are nonetheless engaging and emotionally affecting, there are portions that don’t ring true, especially a moment involving innovation during a fight with desperados attempting to seize Johanna for foul purposes. As I mentioned, the acting and the filming make this work.  Hanks’s older man is grey of beard and emotionally tired.  Zengel is an absolute natural, something that Hanks and Greengrass both comment on in the attached features and is utterly unselfconscious about acting in a film opposite Hanks.  She is quite remarkable.

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