KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON : Tuesday 31st October 2023.

In my first trip to a movie theatre in a month, I saw the MA15+ Rated 'KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON' this week. This American epic Western crime drama film is Co-Written for the screen and Directed by Martin Scorsese, who needs no introduction I'm sure, and is based on the 2017 non-fiction book of the same name by David Grann. The film, which cost a reported US$200M, had its World Premiere screening in late May this year at the Cannes Film Festival to widespread critical acclaim, and went on worldwide release on the 19th October. It marks the sixth feature film collaboration between Scorsese and DiCaprio and the tenth between Scorsese and De Niro. The film has so far grossed US$88M.

The film opens with elders of the Osage tribe of native American Indians sullenly burying a ceremonial pipe, and grieving over their descendants' assimilation into White American society. Wandering through their Oklahoma reservation, which features the annual 'flower moon' phenomenon of larger plants killing off smaller ones in Springtime, several Osage tribesmen are seen dancing as oil bursts from the ground and rains down the black gold on them. The tribe needless to say becomes very wealthy, as it retains mineral rights, and members share in oil-lease revenues, making them the wealthiest people on earth per capita. However, the law requires court-appointed guardians to manage the financial return to full and half-blood members, assuming them to be 'incompetent'.

In 1919, the money hungry and largely unintelligent Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) returns from World War I, where he worked as a field cook, to live with his very wealthy uncle William King Hale (Robert De Niro) on his large reservation ranch in Fairfax. Oklahoma. Hale, is a reserve deputy sheriff popularly known as 'King', who masquerades as a friendly benefactor of the Osage, speaking their language and bestowing gifts upon them, but he has ulterior motives and secretly schemes to kill them off and steal their wealth. He tells Ernest, who now works as a cab driver, to court Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), an Osage whose family owns oil headrights. 

A romance develops, and the two are married in a grand wedding. Hale meanwhile plots the deaths of several wealthy Osage. He tells Ernest he will inherit more headrights if more of Mollie's family dies, with her mother Lizzie Q (Tantoo Cardinal) already quite ill and knocking on death's door. After Mollie's sister Minnie (Jillian Dion) dies of a mysterious illness, Hale orders Ernest’s brother Byron (Scott Shepherd) to kill Mollie’s other sister, the rebellious Anna (Cara Jade Myers). Lizzie and the Osage tribal council blame the reservation's white folks for the deaths and urge the tribe to stand their ground and fight back. A newsreel of the 1921 race massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma causes further concern among the Osage that a similar attack could occur on their land. Lizzie dies shortly afterward in her bed.

Despite everything Ernest genuinely loves Mollie and they have children. Hale, however, persuades Ernest to poison Mollie’s insulin which she is prescribed for her diabetes, and is led to believe that she is only one of five people in the entire world to benefit from this treatment, which Hale is paying for. Ernest is in denial about the damage it’s causing, as Hale insists it merely 'slows her down'. Mollie’s condition continues to deteriorate. Hale orders the death of Henry Roan (William Belleau), Mollie's first husband whom she married when she was just fifteen years old, to collect the sum of US$25K which Hale had insured his life for, and has Ernest organise the murder. However, Ernest messes up the killing, so Hale, being a member of the Mason's, brutally beats his backside with a wooden paddle. Hale then orders Ernest to arrange the murders of Rita (JaNae Collins), Mollie's last remaining sister, and her husband Bill Smith (Jason Isbell), by blowing up her house with the explosives laid by Acie Kirby (Pete Yorn) a local expert in such matters. Mollie inherits all her family's headrights.

Mollie hires William J. Burns (Gary Basaraba), a private detective, but he gets severely beaten up and is chased out of Fairfax by Ernest and Byron. Despite her illness, Mollie travels to Washington with an Osage delegation and begs President Calvin Coolidge for help. The Bureau of Investigation (BOI) sends Agent Tom White (Jesse Plemons) and several other agents, and they quickly uncover the truth concerning the series of murders and who is behind them. Hale attempts to cover his tracks by murdering several of his own hired killers, but White arrests him and Ernest. The agents find Mollie severely ill and have her admitted to hospital where she receives proper medical care and in time recovers. 

Agent White convinces Ernest to confess and turn state's evidence against Hale. W. S. Hamilton (Brendan Fraser), Hale's attorney, tries to convince Ernest to claim he was beaten and tortured while in custody, and to recant. After one of his daughters dies of whooping cough, Ernest decides to follow through with testifying against his uncle, with Prosecutor Peter Leaward (John Lithgow) leading the charge here. Hale unsuccessfully tries to have Ernest murdered. Mollie meets with Ernest a last time, but leaves him when he will not admit to poisoning her. 

A filmed report for a radio show sponsored by Lucky Strike cigarettes, provides a closing update. Ernest and Hale were both convicted and received life sentences. They were, however, paroled after many years of serving jail time, despite protests to the parole board by the Osage. Byron served no prison time, due to a hung jury. Doctors James and David Shoun (Steve Witting and Steve Routman respectively), who had given Ernest poison to administer to Mollie along with insulin, and were implicated in other 'wasting deaths', were not prosecuted due to 'lack of evidence'. Mollie divorced Ernest after the trial. She remarried and died of diabetes at the age of fifty in 1937. She was buried with her family - parents, sisters and daughter. Her obituary did not refer to the Osage murders that came to be known as the 'Reign of Terror'.

'Killers of The Flower Moon' is a talkfest of a film interspersed with moments of unforgivable violence meted out on the Osage peoples. Not that there's anything particularly wrong with that, as we have seen recently with Christopher Nolan's epic biopic 'Oppenheimer' which was made for half of what Scorsese spent to bring this epic to the big screen and grossed almost ten times that amount and still counting, where as for all the justifiable praise heaped on this film it is hardly likely to make back its production budget! That said, Scorsese has here crafted a meticulous work of cinematic art - from the top notch production design, to the formidable acting talent on display, to the sweeping vistas and the rotten corrupt truth of how the white man tried to eradicate the first nations people of America all in the name of greed, jealousy and ultimately murder. A must see film on the big screen, if nothing else than to be taught a valuable history lesson, for me this film is good, very good in fact, but its not great, and at a runtime of just a nudge under three and a half hours it does labour in places.

'Killers of The Flower Moon' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard from a possible five claps. 

-Steve, at Odeon Online-