KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON

Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone, Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Brendan Fraser, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, William Belleau, Louis Cancelmi and Scott Shepherd.
Writers: Eric Roth, Martin and David Grann. Based on the 2017 book by David Grann.
Director: Martin Scorsese.

Rating:  ★ ★ ★

The latest match-up of Marty, Leo and Bobby is based on journalist David Grann’s 2017 non-fiction book, which investigates a series of murders of wealthy Osage people that took place in Osage County, Oklahoma, in the early 1920s. Big oil deposits were discovered beneath their native title-held land and the state court awarded rights and all profits to the Osage people.

But cunning capitalists devise a plot to eliminate the Osage. White settlers marry themselves to Osage women, binding themselves by wedlock to the Osage oil receipts, and soon any full blood relatives in line for the money are found dead. Officially, the count of the wealthy Osage victims reaches 20, though likely hundreds more were killed. The book details the newly formed FBI's investigation of the murders, as well as the eventual trial and conviction of cattleman William King Hale as the mastermind behind the plot.

The lead character in the book is investigator Tom White. In the film, he’s played by Jesse Plemons, though doesn’t make an appearance until about the two hour mark. Instead, Scorsese’s protagonist is returned WW1 serviceman Ernest Burkhart, played by Leonardo di Caprio. He’s not a very interesting or complex character, and Leo gives one of his less convincing performances, but he does provide Scorsese with a device upon which to pivot his plotting with flashbacks that slowly reveal Ernest to be an easily-manipulated and violent tool of cattleman kingpin William ‘King’ Hale (Robert de Niro). 

Scorsese’s key interest in this narrative is the criminal machinations of the plot, which is no surprise given his career has almost exclusively been that type of film. Women in Scorsese films are usually victimised or bullied into sadness, mostly present to show what scumbags his lead characters are, like in Raging Bull or The Wolf of Wall Street or Casino or Goodfellas or Taxi Driver or Gangs of New York (that is, if they are present at all, like in The Irishman or The Departed).

He casts the brilliant Lily Gladstone as Osage woman Molly, the strongest sister in a family of strong women...or so we are left to assume. She is smart and sensitive and proudly Osage, but she’s subservient and naive when it comes to the actions of her brutish husband, Ernest. With her whole tribe dying around her, Ernest (and Scorsese) keeps her quiet by plying her drugs and deceit…until good white man medicine saves her and she gets a brief moment to confront Ernest about his actions.      

Molly is a support character in what should be her story. Instead, Scorsese gives more screen time than he should to toothless hillbilly henchmen or, even more worryingly, one-dimensional depictions of Osage as violent drunks or mentally unwell or noble but nonplussed. Although he exhibits his usual technical flair and filmmaking bravado, Scorsese skirts around the issues that could’ve been addressed to tell a story we’ve already seen him tell.