Killers of the flower Moon review

[Westside Steve]

 

Killers of the Flower Moon

Paramount/Apple

R.                  208 min

 

The other side of the coin we talked about with BUTCHER’S CROSSING, in which the director didn't have the juice to direct the star we have a case where nobody involved with the production has the stones to tell the director, Martin Scorsese, that he might be going a little long, though the length really only goes to deter the erstwhile moviegoer.

The two films also share a common theme which boils down to the ham handed dealings the United States government had with the natives. Unlike the Romans who, upon conquering any nation, made all the inhabitants citizens of Rome or the Vikings who assimilated the current culture with their own, the European settlers brought with them what might be the worst plague ever foisted upon a nation; namely lawyers.

In 1875 the government employed Buffalo Hunters to eliminate the source of the Indians life and sustenance. Barbaric? Probably but at least more straightforward than the approach 50 years later. Lawyers and politicians wrote some crazy laws and made treaties with people who had absolutely no understanding or grasp of either European law or politics. Hence the Indians were swindled into accepting useless land across the West as reservations. The Osage wound up with a large piece of Oklahoma that no one cared about until oil was found. All of a sudden the Osage tribe were among the richest people in the world. Having no concept of wealth they became the targets of swindlers and crooks who ran the legal system. Legally Indians were forbidden from all sorts of different things, including free and complete access to wealth unless they were married to a white person. That led to a rash of marriages to unsuspecting Indian women by ruthless and greedy White men. Reprehensible? Absolutely, but it gets worse. The natives, already fallen prey to diabetes , probably caused by a completely new diet, fire water and horrible medical practices, are dying at an alarming rate. Natural causes are only part of this film the focus is on actual murder for profit.

At a little over 400 Pages the book, which bored me nearly to tears, covers an almost indeterminable number of characters and situations ranging from bad to horrible. For that reason, I was extremely hesitant to sit through three and a half hours of an emotional and depressing picture made from that subject matter. For any of you out there who have that concern let me tell you right now I was wrong. I should never have doubted Scorsese. There's no possible way to document all the different stories of all the different characters so I won't, but what I can do is assure you that in some ways at the end of the film you might just feel the three and a half hours wasn't quite enough to tell the whole story. It's something we never knew, and it's brilliant.

And kudos to Robert De Niro for his first quality role in years.

 

A

WSS

 

[Ibleedbrown]

This flick dropped on Apple+ recently, l watched it last night. It was definitely interesting and had its moments. I consider myself a Scorsese fan and l thought he did a fantastic job. I guess my main gripe is, as the flick went on, l ran outta characters that l actually liked. 

[Westside Steve]

19 hours ago, Ibleedbrown said:

This flick dropped on Apple+ recently, l watched it last night. It was definitely interesting and had its moments. I consider myself a Scorsese fan and l thought he did a fantastic job. I guess my main gripe is, as the flick went on, l ran outta characters that l actually liked. 

Yes they're really weren't any. Which is one of the very intriguing aspects of the movie. Everybody sucked.

WSS