His character is a former Confederate soldier
who is dismayed by the lynching of Black men
and even kindly buries a victim of it. He notes
ruefully that settlers kill Native Americans
for their land and that Native Americans kill
settlers for doing that, a deadly cycle that he
stands outside. He feels the frustration between
Southern civilians and Union troops but hopes
all sides can get along. “We’re all hurting. All of
us,” he says “These are difficult times.” All around
him there is filth and violence and yet Hanks’
captain is not of it.
This is the film’s big weakness. The script tries
to suggest that our patient captain is riddled
with guilt for what he did as a soldier, but the
Hanks we see is just too pure and noble. When
someone asks him about the motives for his
quest — “They paying you or are you doing it
out of the goodness of your heart?” — there’s
just one answer. “I want to get you away from all
this pain and killing, get you clear of it,” he tells
the girl.
Hank’s Kidd never shoots first, despite being
pursued by murderous thugs. He tries to
connect North and South by showing cattlemen
in Texas what they have in common with
coalminers in Pennsylvania. Even facing off
a racist mob, Kidd doesn’t back down — a
champion of the poor and democracy. Here
is the film’s heavy-handed message to us in
(almost) 2021: “The war’s over,” he says. “We have
to stop fighting.”
Greengrass’ approach is more slack here —
certainly from his work on the Jason Bourne films
— but he manages to add tension to virtually every
scene, often with just an actor scanning the horizon.