Checked out the new Christian Bale starring Western called Hostiles. What a fun time at the movies. Such cheer. Wow.
Hostiles tells the tales of a US cavalry officer out West in 1893… he’s an angry, bitter veteran of many Indian wars and he’s looking forward to early retirement when he’s sent out on one last mission. He has to escort a native chief / warrior who has been prisoner for years but now has cancer and has been granted clemency to go home to die. The chief and the soldier have both killed a large number of each other’s tribe so there’s no love lost between them… but a job is a job.
The film is basically one long escort mission as Bale and his soldiers escort the chief and his small family across the country. They run into survivors of Indian attacks, Indian raiders, fur trapping rapists, other soldiers/prisoners, angry landowners, and more. Basically nothing in the realm of what you might call fun or happy occurs on the trip.
This film is relentlessly grim and sad. Which is pretty in line with a lot of modern Westerns, to be fair. But what I liked is that people come to terms with things in interesting ways. Instead of having huge, relevatory moments, the film takes its time – and it takes a lot of time – to just be and allow the characters to realize things naturally. They come to grips not necessarily with the white man’s torment of the natives but with the fact people live, they die, life sucks, and we can make of that what we will. Basically, that’s what I got out of it.
Around the mid-point of this 2hr 10min trek, I started to get a little antsy. I wanted things to speed up or more eventful things to occur. Not that anything was bad, it was just lumbering along. But I think the movie needed this time to ensure that few overly melodramatic things had to happen. There’s a great conversation between Bale and Wes Studi (the old Chief) that really earned the movie’s pace. I think I could have lived without a shootout at the end of the film but they still managed to work that into the character’s ultimate decisions.
I can’t say this is a fun time and I can’t say it’s a quick sit, but I can say it has something to do say without being too blunt or too obvious. It’s a good movie but be warned that it’s not going to put you in a good mood.
Score: 80