Director and co-screenwriter Paul Greengrass
reunites for the first time with Hanks since their
2013 outing “Captain Phillips.” This time, they’ve
ditched the open water for an ambitious adventure
firmly on land, based on the novel by Paulette Jiles.
It’s a visually stunning film with a soulful message
about forgiveness and moving past trauma.
Kidd is scarred — literally — by the Civil War
and has found a life as a newsreader, a man
who goes from town to town reading aloud the
nation’s headlines to small-town residents or “for
anyone with 10 cents and the time to hear it.”
He comes across a feral 10-year-old girl who
is an orphan twice over — her settler parents
are dead and the Native Americans who raised
her are also gone. She speaks no English and
frightens everyone. “She’s got kind of a wild look
about her, doesn’t she?” someone comments.
Says another: “Sure as I live, that child’s trouble.”
The girl has distant relatives hundreds of
miles away and, naturally, it falls on Kidd to
be the hero. “This little girl is lost. She needs
to be home,” he says. So these two broken
soulsembarkonanepicodyssey—like“The
Searchers”mashed with “True Grit” — through
hostile terrain and bandits, while he teaches
her English along the way, like a cowboy Henry
Higgins. “I guess we both have demons to face
going down this road,” he notes.
This is an ugly-beautiful film. You can almost
feel the grime, hear the squelch through muddy
streets and choke on the smoke. It practically
reeks of leather and wet cattle. It’s a setting
where dogs bark incessantly, dust is everywhere
and socks have holes. In this naturalistic world,
Hanks sticks out, but not for the right reasons.