Tom Hanks– News of the World

I am on record as being willing to see Tom Hanks play any role, even stranded on a desert island talking to a volleyball.  But this is certainly one of his most compelling performances.  I am hoping he will be nominated again for an Academy Award.  In many ways, this is a film for our times. Captain Kidd is a man who has fought in the Civil War, and come home to Texas to find the world upside down and full of anger, dysfunction, and even a cholera epidemic.  Does this sound familiar?  The times are coarse and brutal and there are brutal men running a good deal of Texas where he lives, by Captain Kidd is no such person. In fact, he makes his living by riding from town to town reading the news from all over world to captive audiences, who have either no time or no ability to read, but are hungry for stories.  Kidd had been a preacher before he became a soldier, and and his whole world is about to change when he finds a lost girl, born into a German family in Castroville, but captured by Kiowa Indians, and raised by them.  She has exactly no English, a little German, and mostly Kiowa.  This movie does not sugar coat the atrocities perpetrated against Indians, and in revenge against settlers in Texas, and racism against blacks and Hispanics is on display as well.  There will be blood.  In the midst of all that, there is some milk of human kindness, some compassion, some attempt at being civilized.  And Kidd is the epitome of all that. Newcomer Helena Zengel is simply excellent as the little girl lost, part Indian, part confused, but sharp as a tack.  The only thing upsetting about this movie is that it was over inside of two hours.  Though there is some violence in this movie, this Western is no ‘shoot ’em up bang bang’.  This is not Unforgiven or High Noon.  You immediately care about the two central characters and the entire film focuses on their trials, tribulations, and triumphs.  It is a compelling story of rescue and redemption.  I commend it to you if you still have an operating movie theater.  You will want to see this on the big screen—- Texas is big screen country.