OPINION | REVIEW: 'News of the World'

Somewhere in the wilds of post-Civil War northern Texas, it is suggested to a dustpan oligarch, the self-titled "King of the Buffalo" -- whose ragtag tannery outpost of Earth has managed to dispatch all "Mexicans, blacks, and the Indians" -- that he can stop fighting already, but he ain't having any of it. "We will," he intones darkly, "when [the land] is ours alone."

To that end, he's essentially set up a thriving business of buffalo slaughtering, overseen by his own crew of Proud Boys, happy to make a profit off the land, and forcibly dispel any non-whites who have an idea to try the same.

The King is but one obstacle in the way of progress, both politically, and, in this case, the emotional arc of one Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks). Captain Kidd (!) is in the mold of the prototype Hanks character: Kindly, but haunted -- he left his wife in San Antonio years ago to fight in the war, and hasn't gone to see her since -- gentle to those who deserve it, considerably less so for those who don't.

As "News of the World" begins, the Captain has been continuing his gig, traveling from hardscrabble western town to town, "performing" the news for the locals, at 10 cents a pop, so they might gain some idea of what else is happening on the planet beyond their own dusty crops and outbreaks of cholera.

He comes to meet Johanna (Helena Zengal), a young "rescued" wildling, having been abducted as a child and raised in the Kiowa tribe as one of their own, as she is running free in the woods. Identified, despite her lack of English, she had been forcibly en route to distant relatives down in Texas before her intended transporter had been lynched for having the audacity of being Black.

The Captain, being a kind-hearted sort of man, eventually pledges to take her to family himself, across some 400 miles of notably dangerous territory, simply because it's the right thing to do. Naturally, along the treacherous way, the mismatched pair encounter any number of dangers, including brigands, racists, wagon mishaps, and sandstorms -- not to mention a trio of depraved desperados bent on taking the girl for themselves -- and bond in deep and heartening ways as they go.

As you might expect, by the third act, the ghosts of memories past must all be faced, tragic mistakes accepted, and lessons learned, but before we get to the more comfy climes of completed Oscar-glowing character arcs, Paul Greengrass' film takes a turn toward "Apocalypse Now," and takes Kidd and his ward into a western heart of darkness, where they meet the aforementioned despotic Merritt Farley (Thomas Francis Murphy), with his legion of racist outlaws, and the terrified townspeople forced into doing his bidding.

The Captain, ever therapeutic, attempts to be accommodating to Farley, but unsurprisingly, when Kidd doesn't follow the strict orders given to him -- Farley wants him to do a news reading for the town, but to eschew all other newspapers save that of his own self-published rag, espousing "Texas first!" -- he's just as quick to order him executed.

It's an interesting interlude in that it couldn't be more clear with what current political winds it is blowing: In an era in which the country had been literally divided in half and at war, Kidd offers the idea of reunification under the aegis of taking in a broader picture of the world, of accepting our own individual culpability in the factioning ("We're all hurting," he tells Farley shortly after they meet, "all of us. But I'm thinking we got a part to play in this ourselves."), as a means of looking past our differences. But for people like Farley, whose dictatorial power is based on menacing those easy minority scapegoats so he can rally his white clan (sorry, "klan"), that sort of liberal ideology runs counter to his staying in power. Simply put, he's entirely dedicated to personal wealth and self-aggrandizement, at the expense of anyone -- and everyone -- else.

Sound at all familiar?

In any event, with Hanks involved in yet another role that feels tailor-suited to his sensibilities, and a film depicting the evils of racism and genocide (we don't get much of a sense of the Kiowa, themselves, only as they miserably file past in one sort of white-forced exile or other), you could easily imagine the slick gears of Oscar-contention going into motion, but Greengrass is a savvier filmmaker than most, and his hand-held, natural lighting, docu-style of storytelling gives the enterprise a far less glamorous sheen than many films of this ilk. Even the casting (beyond Hanks, few recognizable faces) tends toward the realistic-looking, rather than dusty Hollywood glamour.

In keeping with the more hardscrabble tip, the screenplay thankfully spares us from the goopiest cornpone (save perhaps until near the very end), and gives its protagonists ample space to say nothing at all in particular, especially during the abnormally long denouement, allowing for an emotional journey that doesn't make you gnash your teeth in irritation. Unlike, say, Kevin Costner's ludicrous "The Postman," it also treads lightly on the irony of the spread of information from a century and a half ago, in the modern age of instantaneous communication.

As a standalone film, it's a credible mix, if not by much, but as a kind of exhausted testament to the surging misery of the last four years, and the further splintering of the country as a whole, it does offer at least the faintest sort of solace.

A 10-year-old German orphan named Johanna Leonberger (Helena Zengel), kidnapped as a toddler by the Kiowa tribe, is transported across Texas by an emotionally shattered Civil War veteran in Paul Greengrass’ “News of the World.”