Tom Hanks anchors an episodic Western

     Set in Texas during the years immediately following the Civil War, News Of the World takes place against a backdrop of lingering southern bitterness. In this often-ugly world, law can be an afterthought, bigotry often surfaces and a lone traveler never moves escapes danger.

    Who better to navigate such treacherous territory than Tom Hanks, an actor whose even keel and unshakable sanity seem geared to surviving all manner of trials? Having worked together on Captain Phillips, Hanks reunites with director Paul Greengrass for what might the year’s most diligently assembled movie.

    As was the case with George Clooney in Midnight Sky, Hanks spends most of the movie in the company of a girl (Helena Zengel). Zengel’s Johanna has been living with the Kiowa people after they murdered her parents on their small homestead. 

    A bit of a wild child, Johanna speaks no English and barely remembers the German settlers who had been her family.

    The movie's title stems from the unusual job that Hanks's character performs. Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd travels from one town to the next where he reads selections from the nation's newspapers.

    Kidd says that he hopes his readings provide a bit of uplift to hard-working folks who have no time for reading newspapers.

    The movie's point is made explicit in the lives of both Kidd and the girl he's trying to reunite with her last remaining kinfolk. Each must come to grips with a painful past. Kidd saw the horrors of war up close and lost his wife to cholera during the fighting. Johanna must remember her life before being taken by the Kiowa.

    Working with cinematographer Dariusz Wolski, Greeengrass creates a vision of a west that includes lonely open spaces and cramped towns with interiors lit by oil lamps. The disruptions of war have created a pervasive sense of rootlessness.

    A peaceable soul, Kidd has had his fill of fighting. That doesn't mean that he won't use his rifle to stave off thuggish attackers led by a former Confederate soldier (Michael Angelo Covino) who wants to buy Johanna for less than honorable reasons. He's also shaken by the sight of a black man hanging from a tree, a victim of post-war racism.

    Hanks, who stands as one of the last of cinema's beacons of decency, doesn't have to do much here. Bearded and warn, he's playing a character who clearly will overcome his reluctance and become Johanna's savior. For her part, Johanna proves resourceful enough to help when the travelers are under threat.

   The story unfolds episodically. Early on, Kidd tries to persuade a couple (Ray McKinnon and Mare Winningham) to look after the girl. That doesn't work out. It's not until he meets the owner of a Dallas hotel (Elizabeth Marvel) that he's able to talk with Johanna. Marvel's Mrs. Gannet speaks the Kiowa language.

    The movie's darkest moment arrives when Kidd and his companion meet a group of rogues who slaughter buffalo under the leadership of an obviously evil man named Farley (Thomas Francis Murphy). In what might be intended as political commentary about certain politicians who insist that all news about them be laudatory, Farley wants Kidd to confine his reading to self-serving testimonials from the local paper.

   Eventually, Kidd finds himself in San Antonio where he meets with a friend (Bill Camp) from his pre-war life. He also visits his wife's grave and Hanks conveys the poignancy of a deeply sorrowful man.

    These days, Westerns can be minefields for filmmakers when it comes to issues involving race and the treatment of Native Americans. News of the World seems neither revisionist in its outlook nor is the movie committed to the genre's most insistent cliches; it has the feel of a kind of middle-ground effort.

    When a director tells a story consisting of serially realized  episodes, it's not easy to maintain a constant sense of vitality and for all its attempts at authenticity, News of the World can lose chapter-to-chapter momentum, an oddity for Greengrass whose movies (notably Bloody Sunday, United 93 and the Bourne movies) typically thrive on speed and pulse.

     News of the World is another kind of effort, one that relies on Hanks to stake out solid ground as Kidd tries to save Johanna  and re-establish himself as what you may want to regard as the Walter Cronkite of the Old West. 

     With Hanks at the movie's center, the idea almost seems plausible.

Bill Murray makes a credible FDR

Hyde Park on Hudson is a smaller work than a great president deserves.

At 62, Bill Murray remains a mystery and a marvel, an actor who seems willing to try almost anything. I don't know about you, but if I were casting a movie in which President Franklin Delano Roosevelt figured in a major way, Murray's name probably wouldn't have made my shortlist.

As it turns out, Murray's FDR is the best reason to see director Roger Michell's Hyde Park on Hudson, a small-potatoes drama that revolves around a tepid sexual affair between FDR and his cousin Daisy (Laura Linney).

Judging by two recent movies, American history seems to be shrinking. Steven Spielberg's Lincoln deals with four months in the life of the 16th president and is as much about about legislative process as individual triumph. Hyde Park on Hudson, which doesn't even feature FDR's name in the title, focuses on another tiny sliver of history, showing more interest in FDR's libido than his leadership ability.

Even taken as a minor work, Hyde Park on Hudson remains problematic. It's difficult to understand what might have attracted the womanizing FDR to Daisy, a plain flower of woman who narrates the movie, but who comes across as severely challenged in the personality department. She's the poor cousin FDR draws into his powerful sphere, but she pretty much remains an outsider, never quite finding a niche in Roosevelt's inner circle.

According to the movie, FDR begins this lackluster affair on the eve of an expected visit to his mother's Hyde Park estate by King George VI (Samuel West) and his queen (Olivia Colman). FDR's mother (Elizabeth Wilson), who owned Hyde Park, anxiously tries to whip the household into shape for the royal visit. FDR's wife Eleanor (Olivia Williams) offers assistance, wit and tolerance when it comes to her husband's wandering eye. By this time, Roosevelt's marriage is mostly about appearances.

There are a couple of good scenes involving Daisy. The best of them has FDR's trusted secretary "Missy" LeHand (Elizabeth Marvel) schooling Daisy in the need to accept the fact that she isn't and never will be FDR's one-and-only.

Slim as it is, the movie picks up steam when the King and Queen arrive. Audiences already will be familiar with West's "Bertie," the main character in the much-acclaimed The King's Speech. Scenes in which the king and queen puzzle over American ways are mildly amusing (they fret about the prospect of having to eat hotdogs at an FDR-arranged picnic), and a late-night talk between FDR and the king allows Murray to show just how skilled a politician FDR was.

Of course, FDR was president long before the 24-hour news cycle. The press ignored his peccadilloes, never reported that polio had forced him into a wheelchair and generally cooperated in creating the illusion of authority Roosevelt needed to become one of the U.S.'s greatest presidents.

Michell captures the languid warmth of a New York State summer, as well as the feel for a mansion that the British regarded as "quaint," but which was sumptuous by American standards. As befits the title, the house becomes a kind of character in the movie, the frame on a very small picture.

To say that the story told in Hyde Park on Hudson is a footnote to history is perhaps giving it more credit than it deserves. The political stakes involve the king's attempt to ascertain whether Britain could count on the U.S. as an ally as it marched inevitably toward war with Germany.

Mild and mostly forgettable, Hyde Park on Hudson again underscores the fact that in his generation of SNL alums, no one has evolved into a more accomplished, versatile and adventurous actor than Murray. He makes clear the contrast between FDR's private life and public image and enables us to see just how much FDR understood the importance of maintaining that gap. Too bad, he's not in more of the movie.