News of the World review – Tom Hanks western will warm your heart

Heart-warming isn’t a word we tend to associate with filmmaker Paul Greengrass, yet in adapting Paulette Jiles’s 2016 novel News of the World, the Bourne director finds the perfect material to add some new strings to his bow. An uncomplicated but moving western, it follows Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd (Tom Hanks), a veteran of the Civil War, as he rides from town to town in 1870s Texas, reading newspapers to audiences to both inform and entertain. Between towns, Kidd stumbles upon Johanna (Helena Zengel), a ten-year-old child of German immigrants who had been living with the native Kiowa for six years before the army murdered much of the tribe, forcing the rest to flee.

With the authorities uninterested in the case, it falls to Kidd to transport Johanna back to her closest living relatives on a treacherous 400-mile journey, facing off against extreme weather, lawless bandits, and a difficult language barrier (Johanna speaks German and Kiowa, but not a word of English). It’s a simple story told with great skill, and Hanks is ideally suited to the role of Kidd, his inherent decency and trustworthiness shining through from the very first moment. We have implicit faith in Hanks the actor, so we never question Johanna’s implicit faith in Kidd the character: the bond the pair share is made immensely touching as a result.

Zengel is truly remarkable. She’s already impressed in the German festival darling System Crasher, but this is an amazing introduction to the Hollywood mainstream. She’s fearsome yet vulnerable, and even when it can’t be articulated, you always know what she’s thinking. There aren’t many surprises in the way that the father-daughter relationship at the centre of News of the World develops, but it’s so well-performed that this familiarity winds up feeling like a strength, while the last few scenes are guaranteed to knock the wind out of you.

Greengrass and Luke Davies’s script is comfortingly rooted in tradition – mostly a good thing, though it must be said that the “Mystical Natives” tropes are on the tired side. Elsewhere, it uses archetypes to tell a lot of story in as efficient way as possible, leaving plenty of breathing room for quiet character moments, beautiful camerawork, and Alexandre Desplat's lovely score. Kidd and Johanna’s journey also has them meeting lots of new people along the way, and these little roles are well-filled – credit to casting director Francine Maisler for finding so many fascinating faces that fit the time period perfectly.

The action scenes eschew the typical Greengrass shaky cam style, instead taking advantage of the vast landscapes to create grander, more sweeping set-pieces. These landscapes, full of swollen rivers and impossibly huge, colourful skies, are beautifully shot by Dariusz Wolski – Ridley Scott’s current go-to DOP – blending their majesty with their danger, and some of the town sequences are extraordinary, especially a massive cattle sale that is terrifyingly immersive. Though News of the World is a mostly individual story, there are still some interesting insights into the Reconstruction-era South and the bizarre collections of new tribes, towns, and communities that it fostered.

The phrase “Tom Hanks Cowboy Movie” describes it best, signalling this film as good old-fashioned comfort viewing, with News of the World delivering on that promise several times over. With a compelling, adorably played relationship at its heart and action that relies on ingenuity as much as violence, it retains a wonderful all-ages appeal without sacrificing any tension or emotional depth, bolstered by outstanding performances from a long-established movie legend in Hanks and a sure-to-be superstar in Zengel.

News of the World is streaming on Netflix from 10 February.