THE FILM
TITLE: Killers of the Flower Moon
RELEASE DATE: 20 May 2023
WATCH DATE: 03 Feb 2024
TYPE: live-action feature film
ACCESS: streaming on Apple TV+
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THE PEOPLE
DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese
PRODUCER: Martin Scorsese, Daniel Lupi, Bradley Thomas, Dan Friedkin, Justine Conte
WRITER: Eric Roth, Martin Scorsese
ACTORS: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons
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THE STORY
RUNTIME: 3h 26m
STORYLINE: Ernest Burkhart marries an Osage woman, but gets pulled into his uncle’s scheme to steal oil headrights from her and her family
GENRE/THEMES: historical drama, western, murder, Native American culture
Based on Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
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THE CRITIQUE
THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS
Good performances and great production, despite some major core issues. The first 15-20min of the film is awesome. An opening montage of tribal life, a history of oil discovery, an explanation of oil headrights, and the beginning of crime and murder for the money all make for a start that pulls you in. The production design was so accurate, giving the sense that the cameraman had time-traveled right back to those days and filmed real-life events. Scorsese lures you in, and you find yourself trapped, unable to look away as the horrors unfold... and keep unfolding... until you find yourself just as exhausted as Lily Gladstone looks in her final scene.
About an hour into the three-and-a-half-hour film, I kept waiting for the story to focus on Mollie... yet it never did. The woman whose story this is - who endured unthinkable abuse and pain - never actually got the spotlight. In this film, she is just a supporting character to the man and his uncle who pulled the wool over the eyes of her and her family. This is history. It is a story about Mollie Burkhart and the deaths of her mother and sisters - not about the criminal mastermind and his weak-minded nephew who brought it all upon them. A historical series of events that should be a biopic of Mollie Burkhart, the Osage people, and how they overcame murder, theft, and crime, becomes an antihero tale of a deadly, long-term heist of Osage oil money involving betrayed trust, poisoning, deceit, and murder.
The main issue with this film is the script. It tells the wrong story. Nobody cares about Ernest Burkhart and William Hale. They are literally the villains of the story… but they are the stars of this movie. Mollie should be the star of the story, and her life and experience were overlooked for the sake of these men. The script should be rewritten to tell Mollie's story. Over 3hrs long, the film is entirely too long to focus on the villain of such a tragic story. It became weary in the second half, to see Mollie's story struggling to be told from the background. Lily Gladstone is nominated for best supporting actress (again, supporting to her own story... something's out of place here...), and I kept waiting to see her shine, but she was upstaged by DiCaprio and De Niro. Mollie is sadly underwritten, while Ernest and William are overdeveloped.
The second issue with this film is the casting. DiCaprio is a great fit for this film... but NOT in this role. He should have been cast as the FBI Agent who came into the picture and helped clean everything up. That should have been his role. De Niro as William Hale is a great casting decision, he just needed less screen time. His lines were sinister. We're introduced to his character and we slowly see his insidious intentions develop as he drags Ernest into his plans.
The history in the film is about the Osage people. It opens with them... and it closes with them... and they have a couple of scenes in the middle - a wedding, the death of Mollie's mother, and a tribal meeting to try and do something about the killings. It's so fake, to make a movie and say that it's such a 'triumph' for the Osage people when the movie isn't really about them. They are just a supporting role in the crime story of William Hale. Aside from the really strong start, it ends up feeling more like a Chicago mafia movie in its storytelling, than the trials and victories of the Osage people. I wanted to love this film, but it had some serious issues for me.
Robbie Robertson's score is... killer. I could listen to it on repeat. It is the ideal sound to create the audible world of 1920s Osage Oklahoma. A fantastic listening experience. If you enjoy film scores, get this one on your playlist. Robertson blends Native American influences with a bluesy, western style... an excellent and final work of art before his death in August 2023. The score is undoubtedly the best element - the heartbeat of this film.
For the perspective that the film did portray, the story was sobering and heavy-laden with the hardships Native Americans endured from white settlers. Having Native American music, culture, and characters represented on screen is unfortunately a rarity in Hollywood. Hopefully, the success of this movie will help bring it all out of the shadows, and inspire more Native American films to be made.
If you like to learn more about the Osage Murders and the birth of the FBI, I recommend listening to this two-part podcast that presents all of the historical details and facts quite clearly.
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THE RECEPTION
NOMINATIONS
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THE IMPRESSION
IN A SINGLE WORD: masterful/frustrating
MOST STRIKING ELEMENT: film score
REWATCH: no
RATING: 3.5 // 5 stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐
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