Killers of the Flower Moon: LFF Film Review
Martin Scorsese and his regular collaborators Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio are back for his three-and-a-half-hour epic Killers of the Flower Moon.
The movie is set in Osage County in Oklahoma in the 1920s. Members of the Osage Nation tribe have become very rich after discovering oil on their land and have more money and power than their white neighbours. After a number of indigenous people are murdered, the FBI comes to investigate.
Killers of the Flower Moon is based on the non-fiction book by David Grann, which focused on FBI agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) and his investigation. Scorsese and his co-writer Eric Roth originally followed this perspective but then they realised they should not follow the white saviour narrative. They scrapped their script and rewrote it to centre upon the wealthy Native American Molly (Lily Gladstone), her husband Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio) and his uncle Bill Hale (De Niro).
However, it is still told from the white perspective (Ernest is the audience’s eyes) and the indigenous people are not given much depth or character development. Also, because it doesn’t follow the investigation, there isn’t as much of a whodunnit narrative because we already know the culprit(s) by the time White shows up.
It’s been called a 5-star masterpiece by many. I would have been more inclined to do that if it wasn’t so excessively long. I’ve seen people say that it doesn’t feel as long as it is but that was not my experience. I struggled with the runtime and sometimes found it hard to concentrate. I would have liked it more if it was 30 minutes (or more) shorter – and it easily could have been.
However, because of the runtime, we are fully immersed in the Osage Nation community and really get a sense of the relationship between the indigenous and white people at that time. It is a rich, beautifully shot story and Scorsese packs a lot into it. Your patience and endurance are rewarded in the final hour too – it is tense, gripping and edited perfectly.
DiCaprio and De Niro are as reliable as ever but we have seen this kind of performance from them before. The revelation is Gladstone, who does so much with so few words. I would have liked her to say more but she’s very economical with her speech – she makes every word count. My eyes were always drawn to her because she was so enigmatic.
Killers of the Flower Moon is an expertly made, compelling and occasionally funny epic. It could have been shorter though.
Seen at the London Film Festival. In cinemas Friday 20th October and Apple TV+ Friday 12th January