Killers of the Flower Moon Review: Scorsese’s Powerful Western
Martin Scorsese is a legend. The man has directed Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Wolf of Wall Street, and countless cinematic classics. Whenever he graces the big screen with his work, there is something to love. His new movie is, an epic Western crime drama. This time, Scorsese unites two actors he has worked with extensively over the past few decades: Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro. We follow the real-life story of the members of the Osage Native American tribe in the 1920s who get killed one by one, leading to an FBI investigation.
Scorsese has crafted a riveting adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction book. Clocking in at three and a half hours, Killers of the Flower Moon is one of Scorsese’s longest narrative movies, but it does not drag for a second. Early on, the sweeping shots of the northeastern Oklahoma town establish the setting perfectly. Each moment is carefully calculated to send you into a story that few know about. The adaptation of Grann’s work is more brilliant when you realize which aspect of the story the movie was supposed to follow and you see the route they went down instead.
The book has a focus on Tom White, the lead agent sent down to investigate the murders. DiCaprio was originally going to play White, and the film would have played out similar to a police procedural film with a detective looking to solve a mysterious case. However, DiCaprio instead pushed to play Ernest Burkhart, a man who falls in love with a Native American woman named Mollie (Lily Gladstone). Ernest’s uncle is William Hale (De Niro), a man who presents himself as kind, but hides a sinister secret. This approach to the story ended up being a fantastic decision for the overall film.
Ernest and Mollie are the heart and soul
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