Review of News of the World

The child actor who plays Johanna/Cicada is astonishing, and the world or the novel is beautifully recreated in this production. The land, the scenery, the dust and dirt and hardship. That's why I enjoyed this film. However, the script adds several unnecessary right-on additions to Jiles' restrained and humane novel. Yes, we get it, racism and slavery are bad. The dispossession of the Kiowa is tragic. But this film traffics in Noble Savage stereotypes (in one episode not in the novel, the Kiowa act as a kind of deus ex machina at their own expense for the Captain and Johanna, and it's hard to sustain belief). In the novel, Kidd does not harbor Vietnam-type guilt over his participation in the Civil War on the part of the Confederacy. Why would he, in 1870? Hanks is playing the good guy archetype he always does, very competent, but at no point did I see him as a retired Confederate colonel in 1870s Texas. He acts like a Harvard professor. The film is uncomfortable with its own source material, which becomes a bit of a problem. For example, the character of Britt Johnson from Jiles' fictional universe (outlined in several of her novels) is reduced to an anonymous symbol.