Killers of the Flower Moon Review: A Sprawling True Crime Epic
Ken Jones, OnScreen Blog Chief Film Critic
Martin Scorsese has been a prolific and diverse filmmaker and has been a champion of world cinema, but the one thing that he always seems to come back to in his filmography is American crime stories. His latest is Killers of the Flower Moon, a sprawling true crime epic focused on a series of deaths amongst the Osage Nation in the 1920s.
Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart is a World War I veteran who travels to Oklahoma to live with his uncle, William “King” Hale (Robert De Niro), a rancher who is friendly with the Osage people. Ernest is not a particularly smart man and can’t do much physically because of a war wound, but he likes drinking, money, and women and looks to indulge in all three while working for his uncle. When he is not doing night work as a criminal, Ernest drives a cab, and an Osage woman named Mollie (Lily Gladstone) quickly catches his eye.
The Osage became wealthy almost overnight with the discovery of oil on their land. The Osage families have property rights to the land the oil is produced from, called headrights. Their wealth brings with it attention, and soon, many white men begin marrying into these families to get their hands on the money. Some people, though, have loftier goals than just marrying into wealth, and an unusual number of Osage deaths bring into question if someone is systematically killing them off.
King warns Ernest early on in the film to always watch what he says around an Osage because they may not speak much, but they are always listening. Despite his uncle desiring that Ernest marry into Mollie’s family, he seems attracted to Mollie, separate from his uncle’s wishes.
Mollie, to her credit, seems to see Ernest coming from a mile away, initially calling him a coyote, basically a scavenger trying to get her for her money. That initial insight on Mollie’s part eventually leads to love between the two; Mollie goes into their marriage, ignoring the warning signs. Ernest goes in with conflicted loyalties to Mollie and King, never piecing together how untenable his situation is.
The coyote comment from Mollie is an appropriate one to inform how the viewer should take in Killers of the Flower Moon. The Osage are, in effect, being hunted, surrounded, and picked off, one by one, by a pack of coyotes. King is a true wolf in sheep’s clothing, ingratiating himself with the Osage people, using his closeness to them to gently nudge and manipulate circumstances to his advantage and blinding them to his ulterior motives.
There is a lot of discussion and debate surrounding the film's perspective, what that means for the agency of the Osage characters in the film, and how the Osage are represented overall in the telling of the story. Representation is a thorny issue, for sure, but I don’t begrudge anyone telling any story, and by all accounts, Scorsese sought the input of the Osage in making this film. It is also a true crime story told from the perspective of the titular killers.
The federal government severely limited the agency of the Osage at the time. The Osage were deemed incompetent by the courts and ordered to have white sponsors for their headrights. Their pleas when their people are being murdered fall on deaf ears locally and federally. There is a heartbreaking moment when Mollie, after a previous envoy has been sent to Washington D.C. to plead their case disappeared, goes to appeal directly to the president, and she is met with empty platitudes, essentially thoughts and prayers, and dismissed.
The body count and the gruesome nature of how some of them die are steadfast in its portrayal. Still, it serves a purpose, especially the death of one of Mollie’s sisters. It comes into play when the Bureau of Investigation (BOI), which would eventually become the FBI, is finally sent to investigate. I appreciated that Scorsese used the Tulsa race massacre, a contemporary event, as a touchstone for the events that transpire in this film and evoke similar fears in many of the Osage residents of this town.
DiCaprio, De Niro, and Gladstone give incredible performances. DiCaprio is his usual good self. It is hard to play someone who is a dimwit without veering into making the character seem like he is mentally handicapped or playing it outright for laughs. Some of the laughs, what little there are, are at the character’s expense, but DiCaprio mostly finds the right line to walk with the character.
Personally, I thought this was the best De Niro performance in years, at least since Silver Linings Playbook, maybe as far back as Ronin. It is a primarily subtle performance with only one outburst behind closed doors.
Gladstone is a powerful onscreen presence. The marriage of Ernest and Mollie is a microcosm of the overall plot, and everything the Osage people are experiencing comes through in her performance. In one scene where Ernest has to deliver bad news to her after she has been hiding in their storm shelter, she lets out a yell of anger, pain, sadness, and many other emotions that it rend the heart.
The film is littered with great supporting performances, including Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, Cara Jade Myers, JaNae Collins, Jillian Dion, Scott Shepherd, Tatanka Means, and Ty Mitchell. Also, no less than four musicians (maybe more) populate the cast: Jason Isbell, Sturgill Simpson, Pete Yorn, and Jack White.
Some aspects may not work as well as others for some people. While Gladstone gives a great performance, her character is sidelined with illness for an extended period. And it beggars belief how long she remains loyal to Ernest despite the mounting evidence of his complicity as the reality of events is brought to light by investigation and criminal trial.
It is easy to see why this true crime story appealed to Scorsese, as it fits in comfortably alongside Goodfellas, Gangs of New York, The Departed, The Irishman, and other stories he has told about the criminal predilections throughout American history caused by greed and violence. And like so many of these tales, he refuses to sanitize it for his audience, portraying it in an unflinching and stark manner to confront us with our want to shove the unseemly parts of our history under a rug rather than grapple with it.
Killers of the Flower Moon is a sprawling true crime epic that shines a light on a piece of American history that should not be shied away. It is not a perfect film, and there are some quibbles with it, but it is nice to see one of the great cinema auteurs give a story like this the treatment it deserves.
Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars