Directing: B+
Acting: B
Writing: B-
Cinematography: B+
Editing: B+

News of the World has an unusual concept: Tom Hanks is Captain Kidd—the sixth time in his film career he’s played a captain—a man who travels through post-Civil War Texas, reading newspaper articles to local townsfolk for meager sums. Talk about finding a niche, quite specific to time and place. Kidd really does move from local to international: he reads articles from the town or county he’s in, then moves on to “federal” news, which is predictably scoffed at by Texas locals. We never actually see him read an article from outside the country, although we do get a shot of The Times of India (side note: that publication was founded in 1838, making it 27 years old at the time of this story), just to show he really does carry around “news of the world.”

That’s just part of Kidd’s backstory, though, and how he comes across young Johanna, stranded in the road in the wreckage of a carriage whose driver was a Black man now lynched. She was in mid-transport, being taken from where the Kiowa family that had earlier kidnapped her were themselves killed. As a woman who later manages to speak to her in the Kiowa language notes, “She’s been orphaned twice over.”

And here, relatively quickly, we get into what leaves me with mixed feelings at best about News of the World: Texas in 1865 is deeply fertile ground when it comes to America’s many-layered, heinous history with nonwhite people, much of which is either mostly ignored or pushed to the periphery in a story centered around white characters. Texas in 1865 was less than twenty years from the Mexican-American War; it was the very year in which the last of the enslaved people of the South were finally emancipated in Texas; and was in the thick of ongoing theft of land from indigenous people. It is in this context that News of the World somehow sidesteps deeply historical news of this one region, in which not a single Mexican person is seen, not a single Black person appears as a character, and all of one scene features any Native Americans onscreen, none of whom have any lines either.

The end credits do offer thanks to the Kiowa for “guidance” in the making of this film, so I guess it gets one point for taking them on as consultants. I find myself wondering what Native American critics might think of this film, and as it turns out, results may vary—as in this review, which clocked something I should have but didn’t: the scene in which Johanna eats like a slob and smears food all over her face is offensively stereotypical to Native Americans, who do not eat in such a manner. (Could we argue that this is also due to Johanna being so young? Given the actor is about 12, that seems a bit of a stretch; she’s not a toddler, and what’s more, she’s depicted as otherwise very smart.) On the other hand, that reviewer seems to like the movie beyond that and otherwise has no major complaints.

Johanna is played by Helena Zengel, an excellent young actress from Germany, which lends her some authenticity on that front, at least: the family Johanna comes from are German immigrants. Nevertheless, it seems odd that a whole lot of the Kiowa language is spoken in News of the World, nearly all of it by a little white girl—the only brief exception being a white woman.

Setting all of that aside (and I’m not convinced you should set it all aside, clearly), the story it tells about Captain Kidd and Johanna, and their journey south across treacherous Texas terrain toward San Antonio, is still a compelling one. And, to its credit, the only villainous characters they contend with in the course of the story are other Texans, most notably three men intent on snatching Johanna for themselves. They even follow Kidd and Johanna out into the desert and into rocky hills, in which a very well staged gun battle ensues.

News of the World has plenty of drama and effective tension, even if none of it actually has anything to do with that title, which itself feels like an odd misdirect. It’s nicely shot with beautiful desert vistas; well edited into a concise two hour run time, gently paced without ever losing the viewer’s interest; and directed by Paul Greengrass (who also directed Hanks in Captain Phillips; this is the first Western for both of them) with an assured hand and a surprisingly hopeful note in the end. I found myself suitably absorbed by it, and in spite of my many criticisms would not go so far as to say it’s a bad movie. The story it actually tells is a good one; it just misses a whole lot of opportunities that gradually reveal themselves in retrospect.

*Let’s take a scenic road trip right through multiple missed opportunities!*

Overall: B