Much will be made about the length of Killers of the Flower Moon. It’s a lot like previous epics of film that push the three-hour-plus mark. However, this film never feels like it verges into a territory where you’re glancing at your watch. Martin Scorsese directed and co-wrote Killers of the Flower Moon with Eric Roth. It’s based on a novel by David Grann. The Leonardo DiCaprio-starring film carries with it a dense and heavy story about the murder of the Osage tribe in the United States in the 1920s. These murders carry with them the weight of head rights to land that has billions of dollars in oil underneath it.

You’re taken through a story with Western themes, mystery, intrigue, romance, violence, and anything else under the sun. The Osage tribe became some of the wealthiest people on Earth. Because the land they were ‘given’ in Oklahoma turned out to have one of the most valuable resources on Earth under it: oil. I say ‘given’ because the tribes were kicked off their original lands, then kicked off that land, and then were finally moved to Oklahoma. The movie goes through this pain and suffering and the eventual resentment toward the Osage tribe for their wealth in great detail. An example of this is when someone is propositioned with murder, they originally decline; and then when they hear it’s against the Osage, they say “well that’s different.”

Killers of the Flower Moon doesn’t sugarcoat anything. There are graphic scenes of violence, commentary on how men can appear to be good, but really your worst enemy, and of course, the treatment of Native tribes in the United States. It took an extraneous amount of effort, hundreds of murders, for the FBI to get involved in the community. That’s really what Killers of the Flower Moon is about. It’s about the false sense of security that a community can give that doesn’t actually care for one another.

The performances are at the heart of Killers of the Flower Moon. Leonardo DiCaprio is joined by Lily Gladstone, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, John Lithgow, and Brandan Fraser. There are plenty of excellent supporting roles from Cara Jade Myers, Tantoo Cardinal, Janae Collins, Jillian Dion, Jason Isbell, Louis Cancelmi, Tommy Schultz, and Ty Mitchell. DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, who returns from World War I to Oklahoma. His uncle, William Hale (Robert De Niro) is one of the most rich and powerful men in the United States. He’s known as the King. Ernest takes up driving a taxi around town and meets Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Hale lets Ernest know that Mollie is one of the richest women in the Osage tribe and sitting on tons of money in land when her mother, Lizzie (Tantoo Cardinal), dies.

What follows is a plot of murder, land rights, violence, and some stunning stupidity from people involved in the entire operation. Basically, they plot out that in order to get the land from Mollie; they’ll have Ernest marry her and then systematically kill off her family members and their spouses until Mollie is the landholder. It’s a devious and demented plan from Hale that showcases just how horrible almost everyone involved with this story is. This is no Wolf of Wall Street or Goodfellas, where you might sympathize with the people doing horrible acts. Ernest, Hale, and their crew are nothing but horrible people.

They might lie to themselves or present themselves as better men, but they aren’t. De Niro and DiCaprio are absolutely fantastic as the conmen grifters that set off this whole plan. They play the everyman and the most evil of them all, someone who masquerades as a champion of marginalized people. Their performances are fantastic, but Lily Gladstone absolutely steals the show from them.

Her turn as Mollie spells out the range of emotions that the Osage people went through at this time. They were murdered, pillaged, and taken for everything they were worth by evil, vile men. She shows out the two titanic performances from DiCaprio and De Niro. Mollie is a force of nature in the film. She ties the whole thing together and gives someone whom the audience can root and feel for.

Being a Scorsese film, it tackles some heavy source material but gives some moments of levity as well. This isn’t just the plot of Goodfellas copied and pasted, complete with the piano section of “Layla” over the ending. Killers of the Flower Moon plays like it’ll take that route and then goes a completely different way. The ending of the film was shocking to me. It shows that Scorsese has a few more tricks in his cinematic repertoire.

Killers of the Flower Moon is an absolutely necessity if you’re a fan of Scorsese or just the history of the US in general. It exposes and shines a light on a period of time when the Wild West was still seemingly alive and well. It’s an interesting turn for Martin Scorsese this deep into his career to make a movie that could be considered so many different genres. It feels simultaneously familiar for fans of his films and completely new territory for the longtime director. Through several stunning performances, really solid pacing, and just an old-fashioned interesting story, Killers of the Flower Moon makes 3+ hours fly by in no time.

Killers of the Flower Moon releases in theaters on October 20th, 2023.

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