Director: Martin Scorsese | Writer: Eric Roth
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons
My local critics group gave Killers of the Flower Moon our Best Film award; you can check here for all the winners. We gave second, third, and fourth to The Holdovers, Poor Things, and Past Lives, all of which I think are exponentially superior to Flower Moon. Not only is it not the best movie of this year, last year, or any year, but it’s not even close to top Scorsese. Goodfellas for older Marty, Irishman for newer Marty, The Departed for the best Marty; these films are all excellent, Flower Moon isn’t, and I would have thought that critics would know the difference.
In Oklahoma in the 1920s, oil is found on Osage reservation land, the Native American tribe becoming instantly wealthy and supremely unlucky. White opportunists begin pouring in, following the end of WWI, trying to take pieces of the wealth for themselves, and killing anyone who stands in their way. The worst among them is “King” William Hale, a rancher who plots to marry off male relatives to Osage woman and then kill their wives so that The Family gets the money. Sucked into being his right hand man is his simple-minded nephew Ernest, who may want to do good but keeps being very, very bad.
First, let me say that there are positives here, because of course there are; this is Scorsese, he is talented, and he is experienced, which means it would be quite hard to delivers a complete clunker. The true story is tragic, the era is interesting, and there’s some dark comedy to boot, making the film at least amenable. Then there’s Leo & Robert, who both put on great performances; again, of course they do. There are colorful side characters, there are moments of fun and frenzy, times of pure violence, which is all enjoyable and can be interesting. But here come the problems.
Lily Gladstone is about as good an actor as Brie Larson; make up your own mind about what that means to you. She’s up for a ton of awards, and I simply don’t get it. Then the film is just too damn long, I’m sorry, I don’t want to be an old person, but 3 & 1/2 hours is too long for something that isn’t a historical epic that spans the life of a monarch or something. If you can’t tell your story in a small time period, don’t tell it, or at least don’t tell all of it. It makes large swathes of the movie unbearably boring, and makes audiences too annoyed to enjoy the bright spots, of which there are many. But they pale in comparison to the dull moments, which is exactly the problem. We have given directors too much …license? pomp? respect? …and now their heads & egos are full of ridiculous notions and gargantuan projects. Keep It Simple, Stupid; apparently that even applies to Martin Scorsese. Flower Moon is imperfect, over long, and it meanders; many other films from this year alone are far better, were made better, and should be applauded more.
My rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆