Curator Watchlist
A sturdy, old-fashioned Western road movie with handsome craft, strong performances, and a gentle emotional core. It doesn’t break much new ground, but it’s effective if you want a sincere, well-made frontier adventure with heart.
Where to watch: Buy
Fri · 1h 58m
Director: Paul Greengrass
Starring: Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Michael Angelo Covino
A Texan traveling across the wild West bringing the news of the world to local townspeople, agrees to help rescue a young girl who was kidnapped.
Paul Greengrass
Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, Michael Angelo Covino
A sturdy, old-fashioned Western road movie with handsome craft, strong performances, and a gentle emotional core. It doesn’t break much new ground, but it’s effective if you want a sincere, well-made frontier adventure with heart.
News of the World is a polished, sincere Western that leans on atmosphere, performance, and movement rather than surprise. Paul Greengrass brings a surprisingly controlled touch to the material, giving the film a steady momentum and a tactile sense of place, while the landscapes and production design do a lot of the heavy lifting in making the journey feel lived-in.
Tom Hanks is exactly the kind of anchor this story needs: calm, weathered, and emotionally legible without becoming bland. His relationship with Helena Zengel gives the film its real pulse, turning a familiar escort narrative into something more tender and watchable than its outline suggests.
The movie is at its best when it trusts the road-movie structure and the physical details of the frontier. It’s less successful when it reaches for broad thematic statements or tidy uplift, but the craftsmanship is strong enough that the film remains easy to recommend to viewers in the mood for a dignified, accessible Western.
Lucy (3★) · 813 likes
more than anything this reminded me that i still need to finish red dead redemption 2
john (2.5★) · 503 likes
I kind of get why this is doing so well this award season. Watching Tom Hanks for two hours is always a treat. Watching Tom Hanks protect a child with his life is even better.
Nakul (3★) · 498 likes
News of the World is a competently made, old-fashioned western road movie. It's predictable, you know where it is going but the subtle & graceful performance of Tom Hanks and the chemistry between him and Helena Zengel is what makes it work. It is Paul Greengrass' most visually striking & heartfelt film without being showy. James Newton Howard’s score was lovely. It's surprisingly timely movie too (the movie opens and ends with mention of meningitis/cholera virus outbreak and the spread of ‘fake news’ being a significant plot point).
David Chen (4★) · 374 likes
Tom Hanks was hosting daily news podcasts 150 years before it was cool.
davidehrlich (3★) · 292 likes
Known for the visceral, “shaky-cam” immediacy of a vérité style that’s proven bracingly chaotic in some movies (“Captain Phillips,” “United 93”) and utterly nauseating in others (“The Green Zone”), director Paul Greengrass might seem ill-suited to direct a Western — to work in that most sweeping and stoic of American genres. But “News of the World” isn’t much interested in telling a story about the way this country tends to burnish its bloodiest chapters into myth. Adapted from Paulette Jiles’… more
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frontier travel, found family, surrogate parenthood, grief and recovery, communication and language, postwar reconciliation, civilization vs wilderness, storytelling and news
western, road movie, period drama, frontier, found family, slow burn, sentimental, adventure, historical, atmospheric