Killers of the Flower Moon: Movie Review

Cast: Leonardo di Caprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert de Niro, Jesse Plemons

Director: Martin Scorsese

Martin Scorsese's first ever Western is more than just a setting - it's a deep dive into the damage done by colonisation, the white man stealing from the natives and a damning indictment of the insidious nature of the evil men do.

While the basic themes of Scorsese's works continue to bubble away (corruption, violence), his decision to set the story in the Osage Native American tribe in Oklahoma as he adapts the 2017 book by David Grann proves to be compelling and engrossing - despite a nearly unnoticeable 3 and a half hour run time.

The epic begins in the 1920s, when members of the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County, Oklahoma suddenly become rich overnight when oil is found upon their land.

Immediately transformed with new cities and conurbations, Leonardo di Caprio's Ernest Burkhart travels to their land having survived the first great World War. Taken in by his uncle, William King Hale (De Niro on commanding form throughout), Burkhart makes his way in the world under the auspices of his true loves - money and crime.

However, seemingly guided by Hale to go straight, Burkhart's manipulated into falling for Lily Gladstone's Mollie, a local Native American whose family has come into land and wealth. 

But when members of Mollie's family continue to die mysteriously, she becomes suspicious...

Killers of The Flower Moon is a cautionary tale of gaslighting and of the slaughter of indigneous races - as well as a societal glimpse at how America was birthed and the treachery of the white men corrupted everything around them in their quest for wealth and status.

di Caprio plays a simpleton well, and it's almost comedic how he keeps messing up in the most tragic of circumstances. With puffed cheeks and a downturned jutting jaw, it's like a Forrest Gump type who's caught in the headlights of de Niro's two-faced bigot and powerless to resist the sway of those in charge.

De Niro is equally enticing, lacing his Hale with the most duplicitous of behaviours and while a lot of the film sees him glowering and scowling, he becomes the face of sickening evil with shocking ease, promising to honour the Osage race with one hand and then knifing them with the next.

However, if anyone deserves the limelight is Lily Gladstone's Mollie, an inherently powerful and wise character who becomes sidelined in the back of the film. But there's a rich, intense sense of righteousness and calm coursing through her veins and Gladstone delivers both a tragic and triumphant turn as her character's family members begin to fall. There's no showiness here, merely an understated and compellingly powerful performance that leaps off the screen.

Director Martin Scorsese's patient and prosaic approach to telling the story helps greatly too, and it's telling there are few scenes that could be excised here from anyone wanting a more lean run time. Equally the final scene seems to cast scorn on one of society's obsessions but is delivered in an eulogy that springs out as both different and haunting.

Moody, maleficent and magnificent, Killers of the Flower Moon is Scorsese at his best, and his cast at the height of their powers too - it's a film to luxuriate in and an epic to savour - albeit with disgust at the power of corruption.