Greed and murder are not new themes in the work of Martin Scorsese, but the effects of those capital sins have never been more darkly devastating than they are in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”
A study in the banality of evil, the story, loosely based on David Grann’s 2017 nonfiction book of the same name, is set in 1920s Oklahoma, a time of an oil rush on land owned by the Osage Nation. The discovery of black gold made the Indigenous Nation the richest people per capita on Earth. With wealth came an influx of white interlopers, “like buzzards circling our people.”
Among them is William King Hale (Robert De Niro), a seemingly respectable Osage County power broker. He speaks the area’s Indigenous language and publicly supports the Osage community, but, as we find out, it is his insidious and deadly dealings with his Indigenous Osage neighbors that filled his bank account. “Call me King,” he says unironically.
When his nephew and World War I vet Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) arrives, looking to start a new life, Hale brings him into a years long con to defraud the Osage people through marriage scams and murder by setting up a connection between Mollie (Lily Gladstone), a wealthy Osage woman, and Ernest.
“He’s not that smart,” says Mollie, “but he’s handsome. He looks like a coyote. Those blue eyes.”
Mollie sees through the overture, noting, “Coyote wants money,” during their first dinner, but despite the economic angle, the pair marry, making Ernest an heir to her fortune if something should happen to her.
That economic element lays at the dark heart of Hale’s plan. He orchestrates matches between the monied Osage mothers, sisters and daughters with carefully chosen white men, who exploit them, murder them, and siphon off the oil money from their estates.
This reign of terror claims the lives of more than two dozen Osage women, attracting the attention of the newly formed Bureau of Investigation agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) and his crew.
The murderous real-life scheme behind “Killers of the Flower Moon” is the most depraved crime and villain Scorsese has ever essayed on film.
The wholesale murder for money is driven not just by greed, but also by white supremacy, oppression of culture and a diabolical disregard for human life. It is pure evil, manipulated by Hale, played by De Niro as the smiling face of doom.
De Niro has played dastardly characters before, but he’s never been this vile. And this is an actor who played The Devil in “Angel Heart.”
The thing that makes Hale truly treacherous and morally irredeemable is the way he insinuates himself into the lives of the very people he was exploiting and having murdered. He is a master manipulator, who will shake his victim’s hand while using his other hand to stab them in the back, and De Niro’s embodiment of him is skin crawling. “This wealth should come to us,” he says, “Their time is over. It’s just going to be another tragedy.”
As Ernest, DiCaprio goes along with the plan, but, unlike his uncle, has a hint of a conscience even as he does horrible things. He’s a weak person, torn between love for his wife and his uncle’s plan to eliminate her and her family.
The center of the story is Mollie, played with quiet grace by Gladstone. Although she disappears from the screen for long periods of time, it is her presence that provides the film with much needed heart and soul. She is strong in the face of illness and betrayal, but her stoicism portrays a complexity of emotion as her family members are murdered and her own life is endangered. Mollie is as spiritual as Hale is immoral, and that balance is the film’s underpinning.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” earns its three-and-a-half hour runtime with a classically made, multiple perspective, slow burn of a crime story that sheds light on, and condemns, the brutal treatment of Indigenous people.
Low key and amiable, “The Old Man and the Gun” is a crime drama about the nicest bank robber ever. Robert Redford, age 82, plays a stick-up man whose victims gush about how polite and well-mannered he was as he relieved them of their cash.
Forest Tucker (Redford), career criminal and all round nice guy, is part of a gang the press would later name the Over-The-Hill-Gang. All north of seventy the thieves (Danny Glover and Tom Waits) rob rural banks, usually making off with hundreds, not thousands of dollars. Calm and collected, they get in and out quickly. “Don’t do anything stupid,” Tucker says to the tellers. “I wouldn’t want to have to hurt you ‘cuz I like you. Don’t break my heart.” For Tucker it’s not about the cash, it’s about the rush.
Driving the get-a-way car after one bank job Tucker stops to assist a stranded motorist. As the police whiz by he gives Jewel (Sissy Spacek) a line of chat that charms her enough to agree to go for a cup of coffee. The pair hit it off and begin a friendship that borders on the romantic.
Meanwhile Tucker and crew are robbing banks, sometimes more than one a day, a streak that draws the attention of detective John Hunt (Casey Affleck) and the FBI.
The mostly true story of Tucker and his life of crime and passion is a low-key affair anchored by the easy charms of Redford and Spacek.
Redford made a career playing rascally anti-heroes like the leads in “The Sting” and “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” Here there is a wistfulness in the character that comes with age and the realization that the end of the road is just around the bend.
Spacek plays Jewel as a woman of strength; a person who has seen it all but is still open to finding something new. Together the pair bring life experiences that create a lived-in chemistry that is never less than watchable.
Add to that a scene-stealing performance from Tom Waits—every line of his dialogue sounds like a line from one of his songs—and you have a new take on an American staple, the charismatic scoundrel.
“The Lost City of Z” is an epic true-to-life tale of adventure and intrigue. Based on the book of the same name by David Grann it stars Charlie Hunnam as a determined explorer who obsession with the Amazon led to his mysterious disappearance.
Hunnam, who will soon be seen playing another legendary character in “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword,” is Colonel Percy Fawcett, a man convinced of the existence of a lost city deep in the Amazon. When he discovers pottery, evidence of an advanced civilization in the region, he is ridiculed by the scientific establishment who hang on to old-fashioned ideas about indigenous populations. “Your exploits have opened every door for you,” he’s told, “but keep your ideas to yourself. It is one thing to celebrate the people it’s another to elevate them.” At a boisterous Royal Geographical Society meeting he says, “If we can find a city where one was for not to be able to exist we could rewrite history,” only to be drowned out by dismissive chants of, “Pots and pans! Pots and pans!” from his peers.
Determined to prove his theory he returns, aide-de-camp Corporal Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson) and crew at his side only to be side-tracked by James Murray (Angus Macfadyen), a fellow explorer unfit for the journey.
Fawcett doesn’t give up despite Murray’s lawsuits, family trouble, his resignation from the Royal Geographical Society and World War I.
His search for the Lost City of Z provides the subtext for the movie. As much as this is an adventure tale, it’s also the story of a man desperate to not only prove himself personally and professionally. Personally he was, as the mucky mucks say, “unwise in his choice of ancestors.” Professionally he needs to prove to his British countrymen that the forgotten South American civilization were not “savages,” but people who have tamed the jungle and created empires.
His third and final try is a stripped down affair with son Jack (Tom Holland) in tow.
Traditionally made, “The Lost City of Z” feels old fashioned, as though you could almost imagine James Mason and Gregory Peck in the leads. It takes us back to a slower time, a moment in history before there were Starbucks on evefy corner and movies had to have gotcha moments woven throughout. It throws the modern adventure movie playbook out the window. There is no timetable for the action, no crash-and-burn scene every 10 minutes, just a story of survival and class warfare.
For much of the running time that’s OK. Director James Gray takes his time laying out Fawcett’s obsession, allowing us to get under the skin of a man with much to prove. It begins to feel overlong at the hour-and-a-half mark during a scene, wedged between the second and third explorations were a psychic goes on at length about the importance of Fawcett’s work and we still have WWI and the third expedition to go! It is the movie’s “dropout moment,” the scene that loses the audience and the film never recovers.
It’s a shame because “The Lost City of Z” is a handsome movie, ripe with subtext and solid performances. It’s also self indulgent, in need of one of Fawcett’s jungle machetes to chop it down to size.
