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Hanks’s former Confederate captain tries to help Helena Zengel’s terrified orphan across lawless post-civil war Texas in this Paul Greengrass western that rarely comes alive
Tom Hanks leads this handsomely shot but stolid and blandly self-satisfied western, based on the 2016 novel by Paulette Jiles; it’s directed by Paul Greengrass (who co-wrote the screenplay with Luke Davies) but mostly without the dynamism and visceral action he’s known for. Hanks plays Kidd, a former Confederate captain with a secret sadness in his heart, making a living in the troubled and lawless state of Texas after the civil war, travelling around like a huckster or a preacher, reading aloud stories from the newspapers to the mostly illiterate townsfolk for 10 cents a head.One hot afternoon, he chances across the body of a hanged black man who has evidently had the charge of a terrified and now mute little white girl that Kidd finds cowering nearby. This is Johanna, whose German migrant pioneer family were slaughtered by Kiowa Native American warriors, who took Johanna away and renamed her “Cicada” but who were then slaughtered in their turn by white marauders. Lonely, rueful Kidd makes it his business to take Johanna to her German aunt and uncle, who must be persuaded to take her in. They are reasonably near San Antonio – where he can also finally make a reckoning with his own demons. As for Johanna, or Cicada, she sometimes speaks Kiowa and sometimes German but mostly nothing at all. Yet she has certain warrior skills which are to be vital for their survival.Johanna is played by the fierce young child actor Helena Zengel who made such an amazingly strong impression in the recent German drama System Crasher, in which she played a troubled nine-year-old problem child whose anarchic energy brings the social services to breaking point. Sadly, this script and this movie don’t allow her to let rip in anything like the same way. Continue reading...