Hostiles (2017)
Directed by Scott Cooper
A legendary Native American-hating Army captain nearing retirement in 1892 is given one last assignment: to escort a Cheyenne chief and his family through dangerous territory back to his Montana reservation.
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9 films that influenced Hostiles
What critics say influenced Hostiles
Writer-director Scott Cooper is confident enough to reference Ford’s work — such as framing a doorway in a manner reminiscent of “The Searchers” (1956) — while delivering a tale of racism and redemption that stands on its own.
Grave and somber, Scott Cooper ’s “Hostiles” opens with a scene that recalls John Ford ’s “ The Searchers .”
It's an ambitious film that will remind its fans of John Ford's 1955 classic "The Searchers," and its critics of Michael Cimino's bloated 1980 box-office flop "Heaven's Gate."
With Takayanagi’s help, Cooper recalls the best of John Ford’s The Searchers , and with Bale’s help he rectifies its worst.
Working from an unpublished manuscript by the late Donald Stewart, the filmmaker echoes The Searchers – John Ford's 1956 classic starring John Wayne as a vengeful cowboy – in tackling the way racism and violence seem to be hardwired into the American character.
Dozens more will be butchered to appease the themes of director Scott Cooper’s script: the sin and apparent redemption of the American myth, complete with visual quotations from The Searchers .
Writer-director Scott Cooper ("Black Mass") based the concept on a manuscript by the late Donald Stewart, who wrote movies like "The Hunt For Red October" before his death in 1999.
He’s a man of few words, as per Bale’s masterful underplaying and Cooper’s lean adaptation of an unpublished manuscript by Donald Stewart, the screenwriter behind Missing and The Hunt for Red October.
Cooper’s screenplay, based on a manuscript given him by the widow of the late Donald Stewart ( Missing , The Hunt for Red October ), strives to make a statement about the American way of life, the genocide of the Native American people, the inescapable savagery of war, and the tenaciousness of trauma.
(Director Cooper based his screenplay on a “manuscript” by Donald E. Stewart, writer of such films as 1982’s Missing and The Hunt for Red October .
He can't manage the same with his attempt at a western, mostly because the script, based on a manuscript by deceased screenwriter Donald E. Stewart (Missing, The Hunt for Red October), is too awful to salvage.
The manuscript was originally written by the late Academy Award-winning screenwriter Donald E. Stewart, who wrote Missing and The Hunt for Red October , who died almost twenty years ago.
The Cavalry escort includes Jesse Plemons (“The Post,” “Black Mirror”) as a West Point newbie, Timothée Chalamet (“Call Me by Your Name”) as a young French recruit, Rory Cochrane (“Dazed and Confused”) under heavy facial hair as Blocker’s guilt-consumed fellow soldier, and the fearsome Ben Foster (“Hell or High Water”) as a cunning, crazy racist in the mix.
They either come from a big time director like Quentin Tarantino with Django Unchained, are remade from classics like the Coens’ True Grit and James Mangold’s 3:10 to Yuma or strike at just the right time like David Mackenzie’s Hell or High Water.
“Hostiles” also underutilizes a talented supporting cast including “Hell or High Water” star Ben Foster as a derelict officer and 2018 Academy Award best actor nominee Timothée Chalamet as a private under Blocker’s command.
Fans of films like Unforgiven or Hell or High Water should find this movie interesting.
While most of the film consists of the posse riding snowmobiles through the drifts, there are two set pieces that incorporate the same kind of bloody mayhem that made many film critics rave over “Hell or High Water”.
In effect, he is trying to prevent Blocker from turning into the quintessential jaded Hollywood hero – a timeworn prototype – like the one Tom Cruise immortalizes in Edward Zwick’s The Last Samurai.
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This type of searing, airless drama is more directly inspired by Eastwood the director – think “Mystic River” or “Million Dollar Baby” – than Eastwood the gunslinger.
Hostiles also follows S. Craig Zahler’s Bone Tomahawk, an indie anti-western that used troglodyte ghouls as PC replacements for hostile Native Americans — an example of a genre degraded by a modern Hollywood that either doesn’t know or misinterprets the complexities of the great western movies.
On paper, a narrative about a man learning to overcome his violent prejudices against Native Americans while journeying cross country with them suggests a bizarre cross between Dances with Wolves and Bone Tomahawk .
Even much-admired entries such as Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight or Kristian Levring’s The Salvation are little more than dutiful works of derivation.
Other times they are more bleak and nihilistic (e.g., No Country for Old Men or The Hateful Eight).
Visually the film is beautifully shot, with director Cooper and DP Masanobu Takayanagi (“The Grey,” “Silver Linings Playbook”), along with composer Max Richter (television’s “Black Mirror”) painting portraits of the long ago countryside.
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It’s hardly “Heaven’s Gate,” but there’s a similar grandiosity of ambition — and a familiar sense of folly — to Scott Cooper ’s “ Hostiles ,” a $40 million, independently produced, sure-to-be-R-rated Western in a marketplace where even a more broadly appealing oater, like Seth MacFarlane’s tongue-in-cheek “A Million Ways to Die in the West,” can barely earn that kind of money back.