Hostiles

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Directed by: Scott Cooper
Written by: Scott Cooper
Starring: Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Rory Cochrane, Wes Studi, Ben Foster, Jesse Plemons, Jonathan Majors, Adam Beach, Xavier Horsechief, Q’orianka Kilcher, Tanaya Beatty, Ryan Bingham, Peter Mullan, Robyn Malcolm, Stephen Lang, Bill Camp, Timothée Chalamet, Paul Anderson, Scott Shepherd, Scott Wilson
Adventure/Drama/Western - 134 min          Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 15 Jan 2018
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Movies celebrate the best of who we are as human beings and at the same time shine a light on the worst we are capable of.  The possibilities of remorse, redemption, and atonement are unique human attributes and are made possible toward the end of dark times.  The tail end of the 19th century marked a time where the Native American genocide neared its completion.  The untamed frontier shrank and fenced off townships and private property expanded.  Writer/director Scott Cooper knows about the power of cinema and dark times; his first film was Crazy Heart (2009).  People are more likely to look within themselves during the bleakness, discover what kind of soul may be floating around in there, and decide if they like what they see.

In early 2018, we also live in polarized, conflicted times.  The sleek subtlety of Hostiles is that a brutal western set in 1892 addresses that.  No matter how shattered and hardened your insides may be, it is not permanent.  A little empathy can untwist the most knotted tangles and coming together to understand one another is the way out of the wilderness.  It is the exploration of our shared humanity.  In 1892 though, the idea of shared humanity was impossible if one side of the dilemma did not recognize the other side as human.  Grizzled Army Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale, The Big Short) does not see human beings when he slaughters his enemy.  He sees revenge for his fallen brothers, the soldiers he led to demise under his command.  He sees the murder of Native Americans as justice, righteousness, and above all, it’s his job.
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Blocker lives in and is driven by fear and guilt.  His main antagonist, Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi, A Million Ways to Die in the West), is not burdened by those impediments; he feels a deep pity for the hate flowing through Blocker and his vile attitude of himself and his fellow man.  Against Blocker’s wishes, and only due to threat of court martial, Blocker must escort Yellow Hawk and his family from New Mexico north to Montana.  Yellow Hawk is dying and the politicians in Washington D.C. recognize a public relations win.  They will sponsor the transport of a former enemy to his sacred burial ground.  Blocker is not a political animal in the slightest.  Yellow Hawk is the man Blocker hates more than any man on the planet; a man who personally killed Blocker’s men.  This is not a journey merely through imposing geography, it’s a journey of the soul.
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It’s easiest to label Hostiles as a western, but this is not your parents’ cowboys and Indians good guy vs. bad guy romp.  It recognizes the genocide, an acknowledgement John Wayne’s filmography overlooked.  Blocker experiences an existential arc and his crew of soldiers and civilians are faced with what the human body can be pushed to.  Blocker’s command includes a young Frenchman, a West Point Lieutenant, a Buffalo soldier, and veterans who have witnessed and participated in so much slaughter, they will never recover their humanity.  Add in Chief Yellow Hawk and his family and what you get is a diverse group of individuals from different parts of the world all out there sweating together.
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Blocker is also responsible for Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike, Gone Girl).  In an opening which will test the mettle of those with even the most ironclad constitutions, the Quaid family is brutally murdered and we find Rosalie sitting in the midst of a burned out house clutching a dead baby and surrounded by her other dead children.  It is a devastating and tragic sight to see.  There is even a borderline horror element to the whole ordeal.  Hollywood’s earlier and frequently fantastic westerns never presented audiences with impressions like this.  This may be the closest to the back-and-forth indiscriminate violence of the old west ever filmed.  Cooper is smart enough to recognize the earlier ways of showing the frontier have all been done and today’s filmmakers are not going to do them any better; he moves on to something else.
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Cooper wrote characters with absolute, rock solid convictions and pulls everything out from underneath them.  All those convictions are now questions.  Shaken to their core, how does one turn around and admit to people they are questioning their beliefs?  How do you overcome the hatred, bigotry, and fighting without rending the deaths of your friends meaningless?  What led to the deaths of so many people is no longer crystal clear anymore; morality is a hazy, grey area.  Captain Blocker knows the terrain, knows his men, and is as tough as they come, but he is a man who has had enough.  Hostiles shows the story of an American - it’s raw, it’s visceral, and it’s violent - but that is American history.
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