News of the World, which takes place shortly after the Civil War, follows a former printer named Jefferson Kidd (Tom Hanks) as he travels from town to town reading newspapers aloud to gathered, paying audiences. In an early scene, Kidd finds himself in the difficult situation of having to report to a Texas crowd that President Ulysses S. Grant has ordered their state to comply with the newly ratified 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution. The angry throng jeers Kidd and threatens the Union soldiers (the “northern blues”) at the back of the room, but Kidd manages to defuse the situation with a particularly Hanksian speech about these being “difficult times.”
I watched News of the World less than a week after MAGA traitors, aggrieved that their Dear Leader had been voted out of the White House, violently invaded the U.S. Capitol, desecrating the building and causing five deaths. To say that this particular scene in News of the World—indeed, that much of the movie—felt like wish fulfillment in the aftermath would be an understatement. If he had tried to say a few words, Tom Hanks would have been trampled on the Capitol steps. (It’s worth noting that the 14th amendment declares that any elected official found to aid in insurrection can never hold public office again. Ahem.)
Even taking a step back from current events, News of the World registers as a fine film at best. Hanks is sturdy, though this is also one of those performances where there isn’t much surprise in those kindly eyes. Paul Greengrass directs, going for a laconic aesthetic that’s more of a piece with the Western genre than the rest of his handheld, Bourne-heavy filmography. The main narrative, meanwhile, involves a young German girl (Helena Zengel) who was kidnapped as a baby by a Kiowa tribe and rescued years later by Union soldiers. Kidd is charged with returning her to her surviving relatives, but she doesn’t want to leave the Kiowa, the only family she’s ever known. Their relationship plays out as you might expect, given Mr. Rogers is in the saddle. It’s more wish fulfillment, of the sort that rings hollow in the context of the movie’s combustible time in history, to say nothing of our own.
