News of the World Review

The latest game news from IGN - one of my fave channels ever - check it out News of the World, as part of Universal and AMC's "from theaters to PVOD in 17 days" trial run, will release theatrically on December 25. News of the World will debut internationally on Netflix. IGN reviewer Zaki Hasan watched the movie via a digital screener. Read more on IGN's policy on movie reviews in light of COVID-19 here. IGN strongly encourages anyone considering going to a movie theater during the COVID-19 pandemic to check their local public health and safety guidelines before buying a ticket. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Four years ago, Esquire proclaimed Tom Hanks “America’s Dad.” The affable actor later turned this conceit into the central thesis of a Saturday Night Live hosting gig as he assured a restless nation in the most Tom Hanks way possible that, “You are gonna be fine.” In a sense, Hanks’ cinematic output of 2020 -- World War II thriller Greyhound and now with News of the World -- seems to be a collective statement of that “America’s Dad”-ness, leaning into the two-time Oscar winner’s established screen persona in ways that have the preternatural ability to put audiences at ease and let us know that, indeed, things will be fine. Offering a perfect marriage of leading actor and subject matter, News of the World arrives at the perfect moment. While in any other year it would be a welcome respite from superheroes and explosions, in 2020 it’s a welcome respite from...life. Directed by Paul Greengrass (who previously teamed with Hanks on 2013’s Captain Phillips), News of the World is based on the 2016 novel of the same name by Paulette Jiles, and stars Hanks as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd. A widower five years removed from the Civil War, Kidd travels the South from town to town charging ten cents a head to read news stories from all over the world for gathered masses, acting for all the world like a postbellum news anchor. (“Maybe just for tonight we can escape our troubles and hear the great changes that are happening out there,” he tells a rapt crowd at the start of the film, and darned if you don’t believe him.) During the course of these travels, Kidd comes upon a ten-year-old girl (Helena Zengel), the child of slain German settlers who was kidnapped and raised by the Kiowa tribe before being left abandoned, and when no one else will claim her, he takes it upon himself to return the girl -- named Johanna -- to her surviving family. Why? Because that’s exactly what we’d hope for from a Tom Hanks character. And so, off they go, making their way through all manner of human and natural perils on their lonely journey across vast tracts of emptiness. [ignvideo width=610 height=374 url=https://ift.tt/3qL01cJ] It’s hard to believe, in a storied screen career now entering its fifth decade, that Tom Hanks has never appeared in a Western, but News of the World marks his entree into that venerable genre, and it's one to which he’s perfectly suited. There are obvious similarities with Jimmy Stewart as a similar character in 1952’s Bend of the River, but since the Stewart/Hanks comparisons are pretty well played out by now, one can also find also echoes of Charlton Heston in 1967’s Will Penny: A good man with a dark past struggling to find a place in the waning days of the West. As with Captain Phillips previously, the pairing of Hanks with Greengrass works to both their benefits. With grey beard and furrowed brow, the star looks noticeably older than his 64 years as Kidd (who is a septuagenarian in the novel). But while he’s frailer than we’re used to, Hanks still perfectly conveys the character’s moral rectitude during a place and time where law and order had become entirely subject to the specific geographic region one happened to be in, and all one really had was their personal belief in right and wrong. Of course, it also helps to have talented actors for Hanks to play off of. And while News of the World has brief appearances by familiar faces like Mare Winningham, Ray McKinnon, and Elizabeth Marvel as longtime acquaintances of Kidd who help him on his way, as well as Thomas Francis Murphy and Michael Covino as some boo-hiss baddies, the bulk of the time is spent with Hanks and Zengel, who manages to convey a lot with a little as the emotionally wounded Johanna. At just twelve-years-old, the young actor feels like an old soul, embodying a wisdom and sadness that belies her age, and the bond of affection and trust she builds with Hanks is both earned and welcome. In pruning Jiles’ tome for the screen, Greengrass and co-writer Luke Davies have zeroed in on an episodic structure that feels at times like a Reconstruction-era Mad Max movie, with our main characters wending their way in and out of feudal settlements that have sprung up post-Civil War, with the only law being whoever has the most guns. This storytelling style works, both as a way to underscore the stakes for our main characters but also as an unsettling look at how nebulous the dividing line between chaos and anarchy can be in the absence of a unifying governmental authority (and a helpful reminder the American system of federalism was only arrived at and maintained through willingness and work). There is, of course, an underlying tragedy to Kidd that remains unstated but the hints given throughout make clear that his sojourns to spread the news are more a mission he’s given himself than simply about grinding out a living. By the film's end, we truly feel like we’ve gone on a journey with these characters. Hanks’ Kidd must make peace with the man he was and all he lost while fighting for the South in a war he didn’t believe in. While his efforts to reunite Johanna with her family serve as an absolution of sorts, the sad reality is that like the country itself in the aftermath of the Civil War, those wounds would never truly heal. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=igns-best-reviewed-movies-of-2020&captions=true"]

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