Tom Hanks, Helena Zengel, and Mare Winningham star in one of the best Westerns made in the last 20 years—and nominated for four Oscars! You’ll love Tom Hanks’ gritty, honest, and brave performance in this movie, which will undoubtedly go down as one of his finest roles.

It’s 1870, and five years have passed since the end of The Civil War. Ex- Confederate soldier, Captain Jefferson Kyle Kidd, makes a meager living reading the newspaper to people in far-flung towns who wouldn’t otherwise know what was going on in the world. He charges each person who attends his readings 10 cents.

After leaving one such reading in Wichita Falls, he finds an overturned wagon on the road out of town. The driver, who was lynched, was a black freedman and the only other occupant in the wagon was a young white girl who doesn’t speak English.

Captain Kidd finds the paperwork that the driver had on him that explains where they were headed. The freedman was to drive his young charge, originally named Johanna, back to the home of some faraway relatives.

When a passing Army patrol finds the pair, they instruct Kidd to bring the girl to the nearest Union outpost. Kidd has no intention of leaving this young girl unprotected and alone on the road, so he escorts her there.

Upon arrival, he discovers that the official they need to see—in the Bureau of Indian Affairs—won’t be back for another three months. Kidd considers leaving young Johanna in the care of some close friends, but she keeps trying to run away. Now, Captain Kidd decides that he will return her to her family home in Castroville, about 400 miles away.

After they make a stop in Dallas, Kidd meets up with an old friend who speaks Kiowa—and she tells him that Johanna’s Indian family was also killed, making her an “orphan twice over.”

As time goes by, the pair learns to depend on one another—and to trust each other, too. Kidd intends to get them both to Castroville safely, but many dangers lurk on the long road to her aunt and uncle. Thieves, scoundrels, and desperados are everywhere, not to mention hostile Indians and natural dangers they’ll have to overcome if they want to survive the journey.

As they march toward their hoped-for destination, they wonder: will they ever find a place that either of them can truly call home?