This is a movie starring Tom Hanks set a few years after the civil war where he as an ex-Southern soldier earns his living like a circuit-rider, going from small town to small town and reading the newspapers to people to inform and entertain them. On one of his trips, he finds a young girl who was initially of German descent and language, who was abducted by the Kiowa Indians when they murdered her parents, and subsequently was abandoned in the wilderness when some presumed American murdered her Kiowa family/captors. It's a bit bizarre in that Hanks originally found her by an overturned wagon, because nowhere else in the movie do the Kiowa use wagons, so... why did this person? Couldn't they have filmed a dead horse instead? Eh, that aside, that's how the two of them met.

In any event, Captain Kidd (Hanks) tries to return the girl to her family - an aunt and uncle many miles away- and encounters many problems along the way, from potential rapists and murderers to a street boss running his own county, all of whom put the pair in mortal peril. We also get a glimpse of the US bureaucracy of the day, and it seems pretty realistic of what likely was occurring. There's a lot of serious grit in the movie.

Perhaps there's too much grit. There really isn't much *joy* in the movie, it's one dark scene after another. If they were trying to paint the post-war period as depressing, they succeeded. LOL, it seemed like the average day in Texas consisted of rain, night, rainy nights, fear, and violence. Breaking it up a bit with SOME funny/happy times of scenes where Kidd and Joanna are getting to know each other would have made for a better movie, IMO.

It was a bit hard to define if they were trying to make some sort of moral point or not. There were murderers aplenty in the Kiowa and White Americans, presumably the same could be said of other races, but good people? They weren't portrayed so much. They don't seem to have wanted to declare a side, and they didn't seem to try and say everyone was similar, either. Maybe there was no point, just a "slice of life" movie? I don't know.

Hanks eventually did get Joanna to her aunt and uncle, and they were German Germans. LOL, her uncle said, "well, we'll take her in, but she'll have to work", said there was no time to teach her stories, and asked Hanks if he expected money for bringing her back. So it's a pretty much accurate picture of the Germans -- at least of the ones in my family, LOL!

We find out that Hanks' wife died at home while he was serving in the war, and he carries that guilt with him. He eventually faces that and decides that he was meant to be with Joanna and goes back to her aunt and uncle's place to pick her up. When he gets there, he finds her tied by the ankle in the yard, and her aunt said she kept trying to run away, and her uncle said, "she won't work" - the kiss of death for her chance of redemption in his eyes. They don't mind Hanks taking her away - one less burden in a difficult life, I suppose.

The movie ends with Joanna being a bit more "civilized" and helping Hanks in his work. An expected sort of ending. I suppose one could say that about the whole movie, it follows a well-worn groove. It was entertaining, though, and was a nice diversion and outing in these days of covid. I was a bit worried my daughter wouldn't like it, as much of the theme of the movie seemed to deal with regret and loss - not something I associate with a high-school state of mind - but she enjoyed it. You probably will, too.

As a social aside, here they allow the movie theaters to be open, but you have to wear a mask all the time and they don't sell concessions for the movie, etc. They DO, however, sell concessions "to go", and my husband bought a big bucket of popcorn for us to eat in the car afterwards and discuss the movie. That whole "carpop" munching and discussion was fun as well, and well worth the cost of the popcorn. And "yes", before the movie he did ask if he could buy a tub of popcorn "to go" and take it in to the theater with him. No such luck.