Tanya’s Score: Good*
Rated: PG
Starring: Kip/Buffy Wilson
Plot: A Civil War veteran (Tom Hanks) is tasked with taking a young orphaned girl (Helena Zengel) across hundreds of miles of perilous terrain to live with estranged relatives.
Tanya’s Verdict: Overall I liked this movie. Now that that’s out of the way – there are a couple of issues I had with it. For starters – the title. Once you watch the movie, you realize it makes sense – as Hanks’ character Captain Kidd travels from town to town reading the news to the locals. But without knowing much about the movie beforehand – the title is a tad misleading. Someone may think they are about to watch something contemporary like The Post and not a film set in the 1800s.
Second issue: the casting of Tom Hanks. I really do like Tom Hanks and I enjoy his work. However, I feel this film would have been better served if the actor to portray Captain Kidd was 10 to 15 younger than Hanks. It just would have made more sense in my opinion. Not that Tom Hanks did a bad job – his age just seemed odd for the role.
And finally, while not a bad movie overall – I felt the story was slow going at times; slow to start, then some brief and intermittent spurts of edge-of-your-seat action and back to slow and plodding. It definitely could have been tightened up throughout.
I liked it. But it definitely doesn’t hold a candle to True Grit.
*Four score descriptions: Sh**; Okay; Good; Great