**** outta *****

4 outta 5

Hostiles is not a happy movie.  It is a dark grindof a Western about trauma, vengeance, hatred, and the inevitability of death that awaited anyone in the Old West at any time.  Like almost all Westerns, the pacing is deliberately languid which befits the tone of the film but can also be a drag, what with all of the wide shots of horses plodding along or various anguished close ups of people in anguish.  But this is very well made, features some jarringly effective moments of violence and uniformly great performances.  While lately Westerns have engaged in genre swapping like the modern bank robbery of Hell or High Water or the superhero deconstruction of Logan, Hostiles is classical Western.  It’s really good but it isn’t exactly fun.

In the 1890s Western USA, Captain Blocker (Christian Bale) is a grizzled veteran protecting the plains from killer natives who constantly battle with the U.S. settlers.  In a move towards peace between the peoples, the President of the United States orders the elderly and dying chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family to be released from captivity and returned to his native lands in his final days and Blocker is told to transport him.  This rather irritates Blocker since he spent years and bloody battles to capture Yellow Hawk.  Along the way, they meet a traumatized mother, Rosalie (Rosamund Pike), who lost her entire family in a Comanche Indian War Party attack and they try to bring her to safety.  But those same Comanche are out hunting for more victims and may find Blocker and his crew. 

The film is not just Cowboys vs. Indians, other horrible people also show up.  Blocker and company have to deal with various nasty U.S. citizens pillaging and stealing.  Basically, almost everyone here wants to kill everyone else and it sticks in Blocker’s craw that the one person he really wants to kill, Chief Yellow Hawk, he’s ordered to protect by the President.  Blocker carries around a letter from the President himself but in a climatic moment the letter doesn’t mean anything and Blocker simply tosses it away offhandedly.

Bale is at the centre of the film and he puts in a great Western hero performance, which is stoic and bottled up emotions but hints of emotional pathos seep out every once in awhile.  Probably one of the best moments that demonstrates this is when he has to say goodbye to an old friend who got wounded on the trail and he is near-tears but then he simply sucks it up and is back to being closed off.  There is also a moment where follows him at a sunset with a storm closing as he has emotional freak out, staggering around and cradling his gun in the dirt as the excellent music by Max Richter swells.  Blocker eventually comes to a truce with Yellow Hawk out of necessity to hold off the Comanche attackers and it sort of grows into a mutual respect that is never quite articulated but makes emotional sense.

Pike as the traumatized mother puts in a raw performance.  The opening scene of her family being attacked and murdered by the Comanche and is downright terrifying and messy.   When Blocker meets Rosalie, she’s gone completely disconnected from reality, saying that her children are “sleeping” as she’s walking around carrying a dead baby.  This is almost over the top campy but Pike plays it so wounded that it works.  About halfway through the film, Blocker is tasked with bringing a convicted murderer across the plains.   It is sort of awkwardly inserted because it’s never quite a good idea to introduce a major, unmentioned character at the halfway point, but since the captive is played by Ben Foster (Hell or High Water) he sells it.   He gets in a few monologues about the brutality of war and life which are a bit simplistic, like when he points out that him and Blocker are the same, but it’s performed excellently. 

Rory Cochrane plays a long associate of Blocker who is clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder but since it’s the late 1890s nobody really knows what that is so he calls it “melancholia” to which Blocker simply laughs “There ain’t so such thing”.  Cochrane gets to put a face on feeling sorry for how they’ve treated the natives, even saying as much to Yellow Hawk, and has a lot of moments where he gets to go quietly crazy, leading to an exit that is memorable.

Director Scott Cooper creates a nice sense of dread that seeps into every scene as any quiet moment could explode into unexpected violence.  There are a very few action scenes but the ones that happen have maximum impact, like a Cowboys and Indians fight on horseback and a dramatically powerful shoot out that closes the film.   Hostiles is a classic Western with a darker edge in a usually dark genre that has philosophical musings about fragility of life, the sudden finality of death and how hated enemies can maybe become friends.  Almost.  Sort of.