Texas, 1870. Jeffrey Kidd is a former Captain of the Confederacy who now works as a reader who goes from town to town to read newspaper stories to illiterate people at meetings. He finds a blond girl, Johanna (10), who was abducted by Indians as a baby and cannot speak English, and is now an orphan. He takes the girl on his carriage to transport her to her nearest relatives in Castroville. After a lot of obstacles, he returns Johanna to her distant relatives, but upon returning home, finds out his wife died from cholera, so Kidd returns to Castroville and adopts Johanna to accompany him.
Paul Greengrass’ untypical western road movie is a meditation on some of the lowest, worst traits of the American South—brutes, bullies, primitives, xenophobes and racists, including uneducated masses—as opposed to the idealistic, literate hero Kidd who symbolizes hope in the form of enlightenment, yet just like many ‘social issues films’, it is only able to be preachy and show the said issues, but not to incorporate them invisibly into a story with a function. “News of the World” thus feels didactic and dry, with a rather overstated notion of Kidd as a “holly” savior of the little girl Johanna. Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel play these characters well, but it is detrimental that Johanna does not speak English, and thus Kidd just speaks to himself most of the time, which makes their bonding feel as if it was not earned at the end. Some of the obstacles are kind of far-fetched, such as the three outlaws that chase Kid because they insist on buying the girl. Why would these outlaws risk their lives precisely on this little girl when they know she is guarded by an armed man? It makes little sense, except that the movie needed some bad guys to be more exciting. As such , the movie is good, well filmed and acted, but routine and too standard to stay in a better memory of the viewers.
Grade:++
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