Captain Kidd was a Civil War veteran who agrees to take a young girl back to her aunt and uncle after she had been taken by the Kiowa people many years before. The journey across Texas was never going to be an easy one.
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After becoming a veteran of three wars Captain Kidd was now travelling from town to town as a non-fiction storyteller sharing the news of many events that are happening from around the world. Entertaining the people in different towns and giving them even the smallest amount of hope, as this is all happening five years after the end of the Civil War.
On his travels he comes across Johanna a ten year old girl who had been taken by the Kiowa people six years earlier and raised as one of their own. Due to this it means that she cannot really speak and communicate with Kidd. He is more than happy to deliver her as the law says she belongs with her aunt and uncle. They hit many problems and issues during the journey but a bond is formed between the pair who understand each other a lot more than they may first release. Kidd feels like he no longer has a home having left his wife years before.
In recent years we have been offered quite a lot of new and different Western style films and I was rather looking forward to getting into News of the World. This is when I feel a cinema viewing would have been essential, as I found myself getting a little bit bored at times. The pace was painfully slow during different scenes and that made me lose a little bit of interest. The thing is though it looked truly beautiful and stunning as they were travelling during the day and that left for some amazing shots.
The two leading performances were very good as well, we have never seen Tom Hanks take on this type of role so it certainly extends his fantastic filmography and he gives it his all. Which is great to watch but the material is a little bit bland at times and that is something that I could not really get past. Helena Zengel is truly great though, we don't get this level of performance very often from child actors and she was really something else managing to steal so many scenes and worked so effortlessly with Hanks. A true star in the making who should have a fantastic career ahead of her!
On the whole though the film was just missing more substance to really tie it all together and keep it moving forward at a better pace. I felt more scenes where he was reading the news would have worked nicely as those had a lot of passion and the closing scene was one that I thought bought so much joy. That was something that was lacking in previous scenes and adding in some uncomfortable comments and comments from weird townsmen was not particularly nice.