Killers of the Flower Moon

Overview

When oil is discovered in 1920s Oklahoma under Osage Nation land, the Osage people are murdered one by one—until the FBI steps in to unravel the mystery.

Rating

14 Reviews

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  Chandler Danier

  8 Jan 20, 2024

  It's a hollywood oscar film. It's well put together etc. I don't really care for these films. They're fine. This one was good. I liked it. Leo is such a hate-able loser.

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  rsanek

  4 Jan 23, 2024

  Way too long. Worse than the book. Leo has a distracting facial expression the whole time. Some writing also pretty bad.

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  Peter McGinn

  7 Jan 27, 2024

  This movie was well-made, though its structure seemed familiar. It is a Scorsese film so perhaps it was the mob-like plot: a wealthy big shot tries to appear as a benign community leader, while he buys local political and law enforcement protection, has others do the dirty work, and throws any of them under the bus if the corruption is exposed. Just substitute the native Osage lands for the inner city neighborhood. In this case, rather than bootlegging, gambling or prostitution, the bad guy (William Hale) traffics mainly in murder. The goal is to have the sale rights of the Osage people’s oil land transferred from the murder victims to a white spouse in bad guy Bill Hale’s pocket, or through other machinations, to him directly. The screen time is mostly taken up by Hale, his nephew Ernest Burkhart and Burkhart’s Osage wife Mollie. Ernest loves her but he is weak and kowtows to Hale’s wishes, even to the point of endangering his wife. Finally he — but I won’t give anything further away in the plot. The only criticism I will make is that a lot of people are murdered in this story, especially from Mollie’s own family, and we see very little about the other victims except for a little insight into Mollie’s wild sister Annie. If you are going to use 3 1/2 hours to tell a story, I think a tad more character development on some of the victims would not go amiss. However, the movie is well-made, as I said earlier, but I don’t see that I will feel driven to watch it again down the road.

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  BornKnight

  9 Feb 4, 2024

  Another must watch movie from 2023 and another hit from Martin Scorsese. Currently it holds 10 nominations to the 96th Academy Awards (Best Picture, Director, Best Actress, Supporting Actor, Cinematography, Editing, Production Design, Costume Design, Original Score, Best Original Song). It is based on the 2017 nonfiction book "Killers of the Flower Moon" by David Grann, that basically investigate the Osage Indian Nation that occurred between 1920 and 1930. Just as an outline oil was discovered on Osage lands in the end of 1800, but with the boom of automobile industry it value boomed, making the Osage people one of the most rich on Earth at that time, even if the jurisdictions of the legal rights were done by white man. Based on legal attributions and heritage marriage occurring on that time a wide spread of sordid murders and interracial marriages between Indian woman and white men occurred putting a whole af the money in white mens blood dirty hands. Of course being a 3 and a half hour project (after all not all stories can be condensed on 2 hours, and the rhythm is right), the second of Scorsese after 2019's "The Irishman" - the movie (which had the rights buyed in 2015 by 5M) was to start production in 2019, but obviously it halted because of COVID what gave Scorsese time to get the money for a USD 200M production (by Apple and Paramount) and started the works in 2021. I will not enter in details of the characters here, but all is historically researched, and many details were affected by Osage contributions. On the Acting part, Leonardo DiCaprio, as Ernest Burkhart, Robert De Niro as William King Hale, Ernest's uncle and Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart, Ernest's wife are just perfect. The nominations of Cinematography (Rodrigo Prieto - Argo, The Irishman, Brokeback Mountain among other sublime works), editing (Thelma Schoonmaker), Production Design (Jack Fisk and Adam Willis), Costume Design (Jacqueline West), Best Original Score (using musics from Indians and from that time, in a discrete, but at the same time prominent in the last work of Robbie Robertson) are all spot one. Maybe the best achievement of the movie is bringing to the spotlights another history side of the evil side of USA, as Tulsa was in the same age. I expect a lot of Awards for this ones, even with some strong competition - and give this one a 9,2 out of 10,0 / A score. Do yourself a favor and see it, if you like Scorsese epics.

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  TheRealMina

  1 Feb 14, 2024

  Needlessly long, boring and utterly useless Oscar bait. It relies on clichéd tropes, wooden performances, and an extremely dull script. The movie wastes the talents of its star-studded cast, especially DiCaprio and De Niro, who seem bored and uninterested in their roles. The movie also suffers from a lack of tension, suspense, and emotion, making it a tedious and forgettable watch.

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  badelf

  5 Mar 7, 2024

  This is as slick a production as Scorsese ever made. Story aside, this film just feels like pure, unadulterated Oscar bait. In the end, isn't it just a bunch rich, Hollywood, white men exploiting the Native Americans again? I'm not denigrating Lily Gladstone here, who was fabulous.Even she said "So many films are made on Native land, why did it take so long for an Indigenous actor to be nominated for an Oscar?" yeah, why? Well, the 5/10 stars I gave it are only for her and David Grann. If not for those two, I would just be kicking myself for even trying to watch a Hollywood movie when I know damn well they always disappoint me.