Bourne flicks,
Captain Phillips, would surely include “intense”, “political”, “shakycam” and “immediate”. What you wouldn’t expect to find is “stately”. But for
News Of The World, based on the novel by Paulette Giles, Greengrass has made his most stylistically conventional, aesthetically beautiful flick to date, a Western that pitches the director’s
Captain Phillips compadre Tom Hanks, America’s dad, as a surrogate parent shepherding a nearly mute pre-teen across rugged, perilous terrain. Swapping handheld edginess for gorgeous sweeping drone shots and James Newton Howard’s colourful score, it’s less immersive and gripping than his best work but it’s more expansive, perfectly played, and packs a helluva punch when it finally (and quietly) drops its emotional motherlode.
After the United States civil war, Captain Kidd, makes a living by travelling to cities in the south and reading from selected newspapers to the masses.
News Of The World Movie Review
By
Director: Paul Greenglass
Cast: Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Michael Angelo Covino, Ray McKinnon, Marc Winnigham
Screened at: Critics’ link, NYC, 12/17/20
Opens: December 25, 2020
When I was a kid, say 9 years old, I couldn’t get enough of Westerns on TV and in the movies, though in a recent interview Tom Hanks said “they don’t make Westerns any more.” My favorite heroes were Gabby Hayes, who played a toothless, bearded gent for comic relief; Tom Mix, Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger. Every story of the Lone Ranger and his faithful Indian scout Tonto, ended with “Hi Yo Silver. Away!” Its only classic notion was the theme music from the overture to the opera William Tell, which I always use first to introduce high school kids to classical music.
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Tom Hanks and Helena Zengel appear in a scene from “News of the World.” (Bruce W. Talamon/Universal Pictures)
There was an era – and that era was the 1970s – when a Time magazine poll named news anchor Walter Cronkite as “the most trusted man in America,” and Watergate investigative heroes Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were largely responsible for the occupation of journalist regularly charting near the top of the rankings of most admired professions in the USA. (Even today, 99% of mainstream American journalists remain committed to delivering the truth, despite the delusional cries of “Fake news!” popularized by certain public figures.)