Remember when we got the news last spring: Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson catched "Covid 19", while staying in Australia? We had all just learnt about this deadly thread, it was only the beginning of communication about it, let alone finding out how to beat what would soon enough be an international pandemic.

"O God, NOT Tom" read the headline at "USA Today"´s twitter account - and that pretty much summed up our unconditional love for this man. He played that good guy so often we are positive by now, that he actually really IS good.

So let me spoil that for you: He ist definitely that good guy again in "News of The World". For those of you who loved the book - I did - you might have had already seen him in front of your inner eye: Tom Hanks playing that Civil War veteran, Captain Jefferson Kidd, made too much sense.

But the real hero here is German teenager Helena Zenger playing the young traumatized girl opposite the silent, good hearted Hanks. She had played that kind of emotional destroyed child brilliantly before in "System Crasher", a movie that brought her early fame the year before last year and was made visible via festivals like "Berlinale" for international casting agents and directors as Paul Greengrass. "When I saw that movie, I knew, I have found my Johanna", her later revealed in an interview

Her fate quite similar to that one of her first movie`s character , her first scene reminding you disturbingly of that other part she played, this classical Western deals very differently with the story telling: Where as the young Benni in "System Crasher" seems to find no way out of her tragically dramatic family situation to ever trusting anybody again, Johanna got herself a happier end.

Maybe that is also what seperates a fine film from critically highly acclaimed real good movies - I loved it anyway for working like a security blanket, actually something both main characters use a lot to comfort and warm up themselves throughout the movie.

Isn´t that what movies used to be made for after all: Helping us see the silver ligning, believing in the good of people?

"There Is Always Light, If We Are Brave Enough To See It, If Only We Are Brave Enough To Be It." Those now famous words of young poet Amand Gorman inspired me to try letting more good intentions into my life from now on.

That way this movie might one day count among those who started a new aera of filmmaking.

Do you love Tom Hanks, too? And what about Helena Zenger, already too type-casted after two movies? Eager to read at lf@feldmanntrommelt.com

All pictures courtesy of Netflix.