Movie review: News of the world - a sympathetic western about free speech

British

director and Hollywood immigrant Paul Greengrass has distinguished himself with a bunch of brutal action dramas with painful realities, such as July 22, United 83, Bloody Sunday - and said before the next film that he is eager to do something more uplifting.

Said and done: News of the world.

It is no coincidence that this road movie per horse has borrowed its title from the media mogul Rupert Murdoch's infamous gossip bubble, because despite the fact that we get some pangpang and wide western expanses for streaming money, this is something as extremely unusual as a western about free speech.

We are in Texas,

1870, and even though the Civil War is over, it still lives on in the hearts of the people.

Tom Hanks is Captain Kidd, a former officer in the Army of the South, who has accepted the new system of power and switched to becoming a newscaster.

He rides from city to city and reads aloud from national newspapers, to broaden the people's image of the world around them - and to earn a living.

One day out in the bush, he meets a little orphaned girl who turns out to have been kidnapped by Kiowas when she was only four years old and now the authorities think she should be reunited with her German immigrant family, and it falls to Captain Kidd to take her there.

He struggles first, of course (the reluctant hero is a really tenacious old troop) but since it's the safe Tom Hanks we're talking about, we know he's going to complete the mission with bravura (what a movie soul it would have been about Hanks figure had turned out to be an insidious child molester, and probably Hanks had also enjoyed doing something other than a fowl for once).

News of the world

reflects what is being said about the United States today, that the nation has not been so polarized since the Civil War, but even though it is mainly an allegory about the present, a lot of work has been done to create an authentic past - an ambitious production design which with all its everyday details gives a lively Skansen atmosphere.

The connection to our time is extra clear in a sequence where Kidd and the girl meet a tacky type who rules a small disgraced town with the help of hard pinches but in fact also through a local newspaper, which only dwells on the boss' made-up feats.

Fake news, sort of.

"So you're an editor, publisher, businessman and legislator in one person," Captain Kidd / Tom Hanks thunders with a clear wink until you know who…

this fake mayor, but not with a pickadoll but by reading out true news about the man in question.

Which makes the people turn to the despot.

News of the world also reminds us that the United States is a nation whose foundation rests on the indiscriminate genocide of its aborigines.

In other words, it's a sympathetic, but unfortunately not at all subtle, adventure - which would have had more impact if Paul Greengrass had not been so eager to make that constructively uplifting film.

Premiere on Netflix today, 10/2.