TOM HANKS IS DOGGEDLY HEROIC IN ‘NEWS OF THE WORLD'

Tom Hanks rides a horse and blasts a six-shooter in his new film, “News of the World.” Some of you might be thinking this must be his first cowboy role. To those, we respond: Have you forgotten about Woody so soon?

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All of Hanks — not just his voice — is employed in this second cowboy role, playing Capt. Jefferson Kyle Kidd in 1870, a gentle Texan whose quiet and itinerant life is interrupted by the arrival of a girl.

Director and co-screenwriter Paul Greengrass reunites for the first time with Hanks since their 2013 outing “Captain Phillips.” This time, they’ve ditched the open water for an ambitious adventure firmly on land, based on the novel by Paulette Jiles. It’s a visually stunning film with a soulful message about forgiveness and moving past trauma.

Kidd is scarred — literally — by the Civil War and has found a life as a newsreader, a man who goes from town to town reading aloud the nation’s headlines to small-town residents or “for anyone with 10 cents and the time to hear it.”

He comes across a feral 10-year-old girl who is an orphan twice over — her settler parents are dead and the Native Americans who raised her are also gone. She speaks no English and frightens everyone. “She’s got kind of a wild look about her, doesn’t she?” someone comments. Says another: “Sure as I live, that child’s trouble.”