The time is right for this Western, starring Tom Hanks. It’s 1870, five years after the US civil war, and the film’s baddies are angry white supremacists, still waving the Confederate flag. Sound familiar? News of the World has a message that’s both scary and hopeful: sore losers are a menace, but the truth will out.
The lynching of a black man, in Texas, kickstarts the plot, throwing a ten year-old German girl, Johanna (Helena Zengel), into the path of Jefferson Kidd (Hanks), a former captain in the Confederate army, who now makes his living by travelling from town to town, reading the news. Kidd is baffled by the feral child, who’s been raised by Kiowa Indians and has no desire to be re-united with her German kin. As the odd couple travel across the plains (which look splendid, by the way), it becomes obvious how much they have in common. Essentially, they’re suffering from PTSD. Might they form an alliance that heals them both?
The second collaboration between Hanks and director/co-writer Paul Greengrass (following the 2013 drama Captain Phillips) is full of tense shoot-outs and tender moments. You expect nuance from Hanks but if you haven’t seen Zengel’s first film, the German-language gem System Crasher, you’ll be stunned by her off-kilter poise. She’s like the young Hayley Mills in Tiger Bay. An expert at savage screams, she has the skillset of a mime artist and the scene where Johanna tastes sugar for the first time is pure enchantment.
Kidd isn’t the first lone wolf, in a Western, to tangle with a young girl (see The Searchers and True Grit). Greengrass is desperate to offer a new spin on the sort-of-daddy-daughter-dynamic, though,by the end, he gets himself into a pickle. The film’s stance on race is also problematic (to say more would be to give away crucial plot turns).
Yet News of the World is also profoundly daring. There’s a harrowing sequence where the bodies of bludgeoned buffalos steam in the sun. When night falls, we meet the men who orchestrated this carnage and realise how it connects with other forms of cruelty.
White militia leader, Merritt Farley (Thomas Francis Murphy), wants to silence any news not to his liking. He especially hates news that suggests people, united, can never be defeated. Murphy has an intelligent, determined, fabulously disreputable face (go on, check him out on imdb; even when smiling, he looks like a varmint!) and the way the hand-held camera hovers over that face makes your heart pitter-patter.
Greengrass’ film will be viewed, by some, as communist propaganda - and by others as this year’s Green Book. Its attempts to scout out some middle ground don’t always succeed, but when it works, it’s world-class.
118mins, PG-13; on Netflix from February 10
