Saw this yesterday with my Bride. A grand evocation of post Civil War Texas, Kansas and Missouri. A deep exploration of the meaning of home and family. Tom Hanks gives a superb performance as Jefferson Kyle Kidd, late Captain in the 3rd Texas Infantry, CSA, who earns a precarious living as a traveling news reader, regaling crowds who pay a dime a head to hear him read the news from newspapers he carries, with entertaining commentary. In his travels he encounters a little German girl, whose immigrant parents were slaughtered by a Kiowa warband, and now considers herself Kiowa, speaking only that language with bits and pieces of half-remembered German. Child actress Helena Zengel is stunningly good in the role. A German native, she apparently knew little English when the film was being made. This is a throwback to a time when films were meant to be entertaining with characters we grow to care about during the course of the tale. Highly recommended.
Almost Chosen People 