I imagine if one were asked what’s the best ‘old west’ American soldier comes to terms with their role in the displacement of the land’s indigenous people movie, it would be Kevin Costner‘s Dances with Wolves. That’s a dramatic oversimplification of the plot of course, but you get what I mean. That film had sweeping influence on the industry and, thankfully, changed a lot about the way movies portray’s Native Americans. You get a sense of that in director Scott Cooper‘s post-Civil War era saga Hostiles, a movie that certainly has the ambition for such greatness, even as it doesn’t quite get to that level. No matter, it’s absolutely something to see.
THE STORY: It’s 1892, and a peaceful family of settlers in New Mexico are going about their day when a group of Comanche warriors set upon them, brutally killing all but Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike), who escapes, unable to save her three children and husband. Nearby, U.S. Army captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale) is ordered by the president to escort an elder and dying Cheyanne Chief named Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) back to his homelands in Montana. Blocker and Yellow Hawk have a hard history between them, having fought against each other in the Great Sioux War, leaving Blocker furious with the assignment but unable to refuse as he would lose his pension.
Reluctantly, even after attempting to spur the Chief into an end-all knife fight, Blocker and a small company of men take Yellow Hawk, his grown son and three other family members on the trail north. They soon come upon Rosalee, heartbroken and deeply traumatized in the burnt ruins of her home, the bodies of her three children beside her. Blocker eventually encourages her to join them, where he can escort her safely to the nearest city. But once there, she decides to stay with him, and as the group take on a second prisoner, this one an American solider sentenced to a hanging for his murder of a Native family, things grow even more tense as the old hatred between Blocker and Yellow Hawk reroot as something new in the face of deadly threats along the way.
WHAT TO LOOK FOR: Bale is, as usual, completely convincing as a man scarred by his past, tightly-wound and compressed by his military duty and obligation to orders. There’s a steely but affected look in his eyes that truly conveys the horrors Blocker must have seen, and I like how Bale keeps that locked in his face not in his words. Cooper understands this and allows the camera to linger on Bale, often without Bale saying a single word, and it’s really impressive how powerful these little moments are, keeping us always on his side, even when he is clearly tortured by his past and the consequences of it on him and those he calls friends.
Look also at the wholly under appreciated work from Pike, who is simply devastating as a wife and mother left witness to the most cruel of fates, ravaged by guilt and total loss. Watch how she takes Rosalee’s pain to quiet moments of agony, bringing Blocker close, marking him an unconventional leading man who does what she needs often simply by standing to one side. It’s these gently heartbreaking moments, usually voiceless, that strike some of the more powerful sequences in the film, levied by Max Richter‘s genuinely moving score.
A GREAT MOMENT: Wes Studi had been acting in movies since 1988, with most movie fans recognizing him from early roles in Dances with Wolves and Michael Mann‘s The Last of the Mohicans, though the 2020 Academy Honorary Award winner has been continuously working. Here, he is Chief Yellow Hawk, an aging, cancer-riddled former warrior hoping only to see his homelands before drawing his last breath. Blocker is the soldier ordered to get him there, and for most of the first half, he displays only vile contempt for the elder Chief, blaming him for the slaughter of this fellow soldiers in battle. While not spoiling what happens, there are events that naturally–as stories like this do–bring former enemies together, and it is that evolution that is the heart of this story, leading to the film’s best moment when these two face each other one last time. Blocker has in his own right slaughtered many, and can see in reflection what damage that has done. Even to his best friend. This is tragic stuff.
Bale, who speaks Cheyenne with Studi, is again so weighted by Blocker’s character, he seems labored just to stand, and when Blocker and Yellow Hawk meet, each seems stricken by the actions of their past. They share a brief but profoundly resonant moment that is made doubly so because Blocker’s needs to use Cheyenne to say these last words to Yellow Hawk. There is great dignity in forgiveness, and what these men give to each other in the shadow of the elder’s looming demise is what Hostiles is all about it.
THE TALLY: Cooper, who directed Bale in the also darkly entertaining Out of the Furnace (read my pick for a great moment in that film here), doesn’t pull punches. His stories are often starkly brutal, traumatic, and while never very deep, harrowing nonetheless. There are no heroes in these movies, and Hostiles is the same, even as we watch a man struggle to accept his role in the fate of those who thank him for his enduring promise. While the film lacks a certain wonder that perhaps it aims to achieve, this is less about the scale of the open frontier than the microcosm of a war where there can be no winners. It’s What to Watch (Streaming on Amazon now).