Watched News of the World (Tom Hanks, Helena Zingel, directed by Paul Greengrass), based on the novel by Paulette Jiles.
It’s a slow-moving, “lyrical,” Western set in Texas after the Civil War. Captain Kidd, an itinerant ex-Confederate officer (Tom Hanks) rescues an abandoned young white girl (Helena Zingel) who had been captured as a toddler, and raised by native Americans (Kiowas I believe they say). He starts on a long journey to return her to her closest living relatives in the heavily German-American section of central Texas. Along the way they bond and he becomes a father figure for her.
Excellent acting portrays a Texas seething under Union occupation, torn by racial and cultural divides, and governed in semi-anarchic fashion. The action scenes are exciting. Altogether I give it a 7.5-8.
One beef I have. The landscape is not Texas, but Hollywood’s idea of Texas, i.e. desert-like craggy mountains (it was shot in New Mexico). I guess it looks a bit like the Hill Country of central Texas, where it ends up, but most of the action is supposed to occur in the southern plains for chrissake. It’s flat. Towns have names like Flatonia and Grand Prairie. That should give a hint. Locals say when a front blows down from Canada there’s nothing to slow it down but a barb-wire fence in Oklahoma, and it’s leaning. [/rant]
