As years go, 2020 has been tough for pretty much everyone – with self-isolation and household ‘bubbles’ forcing friends and families to remain apart through the unfolding Coronavirus pandemic. What we need, then, are stories that remind us of the power of connection. Step in Paul Greengrass with his latest film News Of The World – a Western that’s not only about family reunions, but also about the importance of education and dissemination of facts and human stories. It might be set in the old West, but it couldn’t be more now.
In a Captain Phillips reunion, Tom Hanks stars as Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, a man who travels through American towns to tell stories of the world from his big stack of papers – and who finds himself tasked with returning a young girl to her parents after she’s been held for years by Native Americans. The journey to reconnect her with her family involves a treacherous trek across the plains.
“It’s a journey by two characters, who are lost, who ultimately have to find out where they belong,” Greengrass tells Empire in the upcoming The Suicide Squad issue. “It’s about a world that’s broken, with an overwhelming sense of loss. And then you go on this journey towards connection, in search of belonging, and that has inside it a tremendous amount of emotion. And that feels very contemporary for me.”
Check out a new featurette, with Hanks talking up the film, above.
Read Empire’s full News Of The World story in the December 2020 issue, on sale Thursday 29 October, and available to pre-order online now. The film is expected to arrive in UK cinemas on 1 January 2021.