Paul Greengrass
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Connections, in both directions
His inherent decency makes "News of the World" work to the extent that it does, and the nature of the quest echoes themes from classic westerns, among them "The Searchers."
Director Paul Greengrass, who directed Hanks in “Captain Phillips,” draws upon the vibe of a lot of Westerns, with “The Searchers,” the classic 1956 John Ford film starring John Wayne, especially prominent.
That same spirit informs Paul Greengrass' News of the World , an epic Western with an intimate gaze that recalls The Searchers and True Grit , providing Tom Hanks with one of his best roles since the same director's Captain Phillips .
The plot is a mashup of two John Wayne westerns, "The Searchers" and "True Grit," that can't match either in emotional impact.
However, “News of the World” borrows more from John Wayne, reimagining “The Searchers” if it didn’t end with Ethan Edwards walking off from an open sunlit doorway.
If we were to conduct a poll of the most trusted actors in America, I’d argue Tom Hanks would be near the top of that list — and Hanks is perfectly cast as an 1870 news anchor of sorts in Paul Greengrass’ gritty and visceral and deeply resonant “News of the World,” a rough-and-tumble Texas road-trip movie that plays like a hybrid of the John Wayne movies “The Searchers” and “True Grit” and even reminded me a little of George Clooney’s recent epic “The Midnight Sky.”
The plot is a mashup of two John Wayne westerns, "The Searchers" and "True Grit," that can't match either in emotional impact.
If we were to conduct a poll of the most trusted actors in America, I’d argue Tom Hanks would be near the top of that list — and Hanks is perfectly cast as an 1870 news anchor of sorts in Paul Greengrass’ gritty and visceral and deeply resonant “News of the World,” a rough-and-tumble Texas road-trip movie that plays like a hybrid of the John Wayne movies “The Searchers” and “True Grit” and even reminded me a little of George Clooney’s recent epic “The Midnight Sky.”
It reminds you of both classic John Wayne films–“The Searchers” and “True Grit.”
Adapted by Luke Davies (“Lion”), the plot is derivative of other father-figure westerns such as “Ride the High Country” (1962) or “True Grit” (1969), but the language barrier makes it a fresh take on an old idea.
What we have here is a cross between two classic John Wayne movies: “The Searchers” and “True Grit.”
Greengrass surrounds his star with a stellar ensemble, including Ray McKinnon, Elizabeth Marvel (solidifying the already unmistakable connection to “True Grit”), and Bill Camp (who only has one scene, but it’s a beaut).
Sully (2016)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
influenced by United 93 (2006), Captain Phillips (2013)
Plot Themes Visuals
The movie “Sully” reminded me the most of was another true-life airline drama “United 93,” which chronicled the doomed flight that crashed in Pennsylvania field on Sept. 11, 2001.
So while the crash landing sequence will grip audiences, it doesn’t have the stamina to match other plane-drama films such as Paul Greengrass’s United 93 (still a masterpiece).
Even Paul Greengrass in his now forgotten United 93 (about the 9/11 hijacking of the plane that, headed for the Pentagon, crashed in Shanksville, Pa.) trivialized the experience in a hackneyed pretense of commemoration.
(It is in some ways the mirror image of Paul Greengrass’s heartfelt, harrowing United 93 .)
Eastwood wants to sensationalize the event by depicting Sully as something of a guilt ridden everyman, while also anxiously trying to film every event with a stark reality in the vein of “United 93.”
The movie is called Sully, not The First Responders, however, and Hanks, trim, mustachioed, and silver-haired, is very much the solemn center, called on again to embody a bent-back stiff-upper-lip professionalism as he has in Paul Greengrass’s Captain Phillips and, most recently, Steven Spielberg’s Bridge of Spies.
The pitch-perfect emotional interplay between Hanks and Zengel, the seasoned veteran and the promising newcomer who bring out the best in each other, recalls the fascinating give-and-take between director-star Francois Truffaut and Jean-Pierre Cargol in Truffaut’s The Wild Child (1970), a not-dissimilar story about a learned man’s efforts to bestow the profoundly mixed blessings of civilization on a youngster who, all things considered, might be better off unbound by those constraints.
The film’s centerpiece—a brilliant mountainside action sequence—utilizes terrain and directionality in ways reminiscent of Anthony Mann’s best work, and is just as intimately tense as the climax of The Naked Spur .
I keep coming back to Stewart and the hard, broken men he played in those remarkable Anthony Mann westerns — “Winchester ’73” (1950), “Bend of the River” (1952), “The Naked Spur” (1953) — and remain in awe of the nerve with which the actor dismantled his “aw-shucks-Jimmy” image.
But until “News of the World,” Hanks had not broached Stewart’s formidable Western filmography, such as “The Naked Spur,” “Winchester ’73,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” and more.
There is something humanizing about a first name, especially for an action hero (think of how many of them are referred to primarily by their last names), and the direct break with the manner in which the films have been titled—it follows The Bourne Identity (2002), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), and The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), the titles of which derived from the Robert Ludlum novels on which they were more and more loosely based—signals a shift in narrative focus in the same manner that Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky Balboa (2006) sought to bring its Philly pugilist back to earth after five increasingly cartoonish Rocky films.
Zero Dark Thirty (2012)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
influenced by United 93 (2006), Captain Phillips (2013)
Themes Dialogue Visuals
In more precise terms, Bigelow’s ability to dramatize modern history known to many but only truly understood by a precious few mirrors the surreal quality of Paul Greengrass’ “United 93,” which also managed to transform traumatic history into cinematic narrative.
The movie's most obvious thematic benchmarks are United 93 and Black Hawk Down , whose respective solemnity and gritty, jostling military subjectivity are both evoked in fitful flashes.
The one piece of affirmative dialogue (“Geronimo”) arrives as matter-of-factly as “Let’s roll” in Paul Greengrass’ excellent United 93 , blessedly free of any impulse to underline heroic action.
Bigelow and Boal take a similar approach as Paul Greengrass’ “United 93” in terms of creating a movie that feels real every step of the way despite having known actors.
And the calendar: even more so than with Paul Greengrass' United 93 , it's fair to suggest that the Hollywood treatment of such politically delicate—and, in this case, covert—recent history comes "too soon," and lacking in the crucial historical perspective that comes with time.
The film I find myself comparing it most to is United 93.
Unforgiven (1992)
Directed by Clint Eastwood
influenced News of the World (2020)
Visuals Characters Themes
He’s not a regretful sinner like Eastwood’s William Munny in Unforgiven , nor is he a veteran harboring racist feelings towards the Native Americans like Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in The Searchers (though Greengrass doesn’t miss a chance to pay homage to a famous shot from that film).
Hanks is watchable as always, playing Kidd as an amalgam of Rooster Cogburn, Jimmy Stewart, and Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven , your classic American hero who doesn’t start a fight but is willing to finish one, who stands up for the little guy but doesn’t want to make a big thing out of it.
It’s the kind of raw, revisionist stamp that separated Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” (1992), Kevin Costner’s “Open Range” (2003) and most of Sam Peckinpah’s Western classics from the morally right black-and-white Hollywood studio staples.
Es el tipo de sello revisionista crudo que separó Unforgiven de Clint Eastwood (1992), Open Range de Kevin Costner (2003) y la mayoría de los clásicos occidentales de Sam Peckinpah, de los básicos de los estudios de Hollywood en blanco y negro moralmente correctos.
Mostly, the project marks a return to what worked about the franchise — namely, Damon — suggesting the relief of watching Sean Connery step back into Bond’s shoes after producers tried to replace him with a suave male model in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service.”
A House of Dynamite (2025)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
influenced by United 93 (2006), The Bourne Supremacy (2004), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007), Captain Phillips (2013)
Visuals Themes
It’s the fake realism of Paul Greengrass films (United 93, Captain Phillips, and the Bourne movies — all appalling)…
Throughout the film, Bigelow samples the jittery formal syntax of shows like “24” and movies like Paul Greengrass’s 9/11 docudrama “United 93” (2006), which turn workplaces into war zones and create a prolonged sense of immersion.
The Academy has gone for difficult subject matter in the padt when the filmmaking is this good, a la United 93, so this should be no exception.
It’s the fake realism of Paul Greengrass films (United 93, Captain Phillips, and the Bourne movies — all appalling)…
…and the Bourne movies — all appalling…
…and the Bourne movies — all appalling…
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Dances with Wolves or Unforgiven mixed with one of the more square Hanks vehicles like Bridge of Spies or Greyhound , maybe a smidgen of True Grit (both of them) or a pinch of Lone Wolf and Cub thrown in there.
A little bit of The Searchers (1956) and a little bit Dances with Wolves (1990) aided by a familiar Tom Hanks persona to comfort and quell our anxiety in a hopeless world, Greengrass creates a universally compelling if somewhat familiar tale of empathy and woe.
His journey is a father figure arc that works thanks to the exceptional German child actress Zengel, who recalls Michael Apted’s “Nell” (1994) when she first appears in the wilderness.
Gus Van Sant's fictionalized Elephant from 2003, inspired by the Columbine High School massacre four years earlier, remains arguably the most provocative American film made about a national tragedy of this type.
Greengrass doesn’t belabor the point or linger on the violence; nor does he abstract it, as Gus Van Sant did in “Elephant.”
For example, a friend of mine at the screening I attempted compared the most aggressive of the pirate foursome to Buggin' Out, Giancarlo Esposito's character from Do the Right Thing .
In Black Hawk Down Ridley Scott presented the Somalis as a force akin to zombies - a horde, a mob without humanity.
Here it’s hard not to think of another movie based on a real life event that set the US military against Somali mayhem, Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down (2001), based on Mark Bowden’s reporting.
Unlike in the Somalia-set thriller “Black Hawk Down,” the locals are not caricatured as faceless “others” who hate Americans for their freedom.
An apt parallel might be "The Passion of the Christ."
A reconstruction, and, lest audiences continue on shouting it's "too soon," a completely scrubbed one, safely leached of historical or political context; overall, the reductive effect is comparable to Mel's spiritually-bankrupt, viscera-soaked Calvary, and, like The Passion of the Christ, Paul Greengrass' 9/11 evocation cannily exploits a subject that comes already embellished by viewers' emotional responses.
From a marketing standpoint, the challenge for Universal is not unlike that faced by Mel Gibson and Newmarket during the distribution of "The Passion of the Christ," so it should come as little surprise that Universal has enlisted many of those same individuals to shepherd the effort here.
The Hurt Locker (2008)
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
influenced Captain Phillips (2013), Jason Bourne (2016)
Visuals
Barry Ackroyd (“ The Hurt Locker ”) is an undeniably talented cinematographer, but his style doesn’t have the same kinetic energy as Oliver Wood ’s work in the original trilogy, which put us right in the middle of the action.
Miraculously, Greengrass and his ace cinematographer Barry Aykroyd ( The Hurt Locker ) build a slam-bang spy game that plays like a you-are-there documentary.
It bears little resemblance to other films by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd , whose impressive resume includes “Captain Phillips,” “The Big Short” and “The Hurt Locker.”
Barry Ackroyd’s hand-held cinematography certainly lives up to the vertiginousness Greengrass’ films are known for in spots, but it’s a more controlled virtuoso dizziness akin to his work on the “The Hurt Locker” and “Green Zone” than the sometimes geography free-for-all of the ‘Bourne’ films (shot by different DPs).
There are times, in the screaming close-ups of the Somali actors, when you wish Greengrass and his excellent regular cinematographer, Barry Ackroyd (who also shot "The Hurt Locker") would back off a little.
Cinematography by Barry Ackroyd (Parkland, The Hurt Locker) is incredible.
Hanssen’s blood-soaked, twitching body evokes the gallons of fake blood that Paul Verhoeven spilled on a distraught-looking animatronic puppet that stood in for Peter Weller during his Christ-like hero’s Robocop death scene.
In addition, the enjoyable stunt work and action scenes have a roughness reminiscent of the Jason Bourne series and the film’s theme of multiculturalism emphasises the global threat flowing through the narrative – with the main cast being so great, it is just a shame that The 355 ‘s poorly conceived character and plot development seems to overwhelm everything.
Saying it’s “from the studio that brought you Jason Bourne” is one thing, but I was hoping it didn’t literally mean something equivalent to Jason Bourne , let alone The Bourne Legacy .
Every portion of Simon Kinberg’s turgid, clumsy spy flick The 355 sounds good on paper: Five of Hollywood’s most acclaimed actresses come together to portray global intelligence officers fleeing from their respective governments, in a film melding Oceans 8 and the Jason Bourne, James Bond, and Mission: Impossible franchises with the recent trend toward aggressively female-fronted action films.
There have been subtler, cleverer and just plain better efforts at bringing women to the forefront of so-called male genres (from “Widows” to “Spy”), but it’s hard not to go into something like “ The 355 ,” which has been written about as a female “Jason Bourne” meets “Mission: Impossible” for over four years, a little wary.
In trying to be its own “girl power” Jason Bourne , its screenplay sticks to a by-the-number formula.
Echoes of gritty ‘70s revisionist westerns – think Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand , or Robert Benton’s Bad Company , or Robert Altman’s McCabe & Mrs. Miller — reverberate throughout News of the World , writer-director Paul Greengrass’ richly detailed, strongly acted and exceptionally well-crafted post-Civil War western, an uncommonly compelling drama that arrives just in time to qualify as one of the best movies released during a year when we need all the good news we can get.