Killers Of The Flower Moon Spoiler Review: One Of Martin Scorsese's Best Pictures
Watching the massive new epic "Killers of the Flower Moon" is not simply a reminder of the remarkable depth and complexity of Martin Scorsese as a filmmaker, but a reminder that so few other people working in film today are operating at even half of his level. Though Scorsese is now past 80 years old, his energy, style, and sharp fury in documenting the evils littering America in its storied centuries remain in striking focus in this neo-Western that is unrelenting in capturing the cruelty wrought by selfish, venal men towards a Native American tribe whose perverse fortune in being forcibly moved to an oil-rich land is countered by being treated inhumanely by the same people who dared to make them leave their homeland. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a remarkable, intense, unflinching film; such adjectives are appropriate in defining so many of Scorsese's pictures, but it is no less encouraging to see him as vital as ever as an elder statesman of the medium.
Based on David Grann's nonfiction book, "Killers of the Flower Moon" takes place in a post-World War I haze in Oklahoma, primarily in Osage County. Once there, we meet Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a WWI vet returning home with few prospects because of his limited intelligence and physical limitations centered around his gut. But Burkhart does have one thing going for him, in the form of his avuncular and very controlling uncle, William King Hale (Robert De Niro). Though Hale (who prefers that others, including Ernest, call him King) presents himself as a friend and spiritual advisor to the Osage tribe, he is laser-focused on getting ownership of tribe members' headrights to oil claims on the land on which they dwell. The specific case of Mollie (Lily Gladstone), a shrewd young Osage woman, and the immense wealth bubbling under her feet as much as under the feet of her sisters and her ill mother leads King to encourage Ernest to strike up a romance with Mollie simply to get their hands on money they'd rather take away from the Osage. Though Ernest gets more and more enmeshed in murder, arson, and other odious crimes to get King more wealth, he also begins falling in love with Mollie, making his true work even more heinous.
"Killers of the Flower Moon" has made waves since before it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival back in May for a number of reasons. For fans of Scorsese's incredible filmography, the notion of two of his most oft-used leading men — DiCaprio and De Niro, who first worked together on "This Boy's Life" when the former was a kid — finally coming together for the first time is pretty exciting. (In its own way, it's much like Scorsese working with De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci on the 2019 masterpiece "The Irishman.") Though Scorsese has flexed his muscles in period pieces (like "The Aviator" or "Gangs of New York"), and offered up riffs on genres such as psychological thrillers, family adventures, and costume dramas, "Killers of the Flower Moon" marks his first venture into one of the oldest genres of all, the Western. And in connection with that, there's the other piece of this that has already led to plenty of debate (some genuine, some less so) regarding Scorsese taking on a story focused on the Native American struggle, filtering it through the perspective of white men as much as through Native Americans.
The wolves in this picture
In its own way, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is once again tackling a common refrain utilized in reasonable defense of Scorsese's films: depiction does not equal endorsement. There have been plenty of online arguments about the misdeeds performed by the main characters in films like "The Wolf of Wall Street," "Goodfellas," and "Taxi Driver." To show these people and their crimes is not to automatically revel in those people and their actions. Sitting through the 206-minute "Killers of the Flower Moon" — a necessarily epic length — should be enough to realize that the actions performed by Ernest, King, and their various criminal comrades are intentionally designed to showcase them as truly awful people. In many cases, too, these men are as arrogant as they are dumb. The general idea of King's plan is terrifyingly simple enough: one by one, take out members of the Osage tribe, ensuring that one of King's men is standing by as a member of the family via marriage, to make it so ownership of the oil-rich land goes to them. Though King is arguably the smartest member of his gang, all of whom present a friendly enough face in public, even his arrogance eventually gets the best of him.
The grimmest part of "Killers of the Flower Moon" is the key word in that last sentence: "eventually." King and his men aren't remotely as careful as they ought to be in their various murders, whether it's Ernest emphatically instructing a hired killer to shoot his quarry in the front of the head only for the killer to shoot the back of the head or a house explosion being so devastating as to take out half a residential block. But just as the U.S. government wrought plenty of cruelty upon Native Americans, they're incredibly slow to act. Within the last hour or so of "Killers of the Flower Moon," the proverbial cavalry arrives in the form of Bureau of Investigation agents led by Tom White (Jesse Plemons). (Grann's book focuses as much on how this sprawling series of crimes spurred on the creation of the FBI, but King and Ernest are understandably befuddled by hearing about a "Bureau of Investigation.") But by then, it seems far, far too late to stop the madness.
Of course, members of the Osage understand almost to the core of their beings what the presence of white men like King means, even if they're not attempting to loot, pillage, and murder. The opening scene of "Killers of the Flower Moon" is rent with emotion, as we see a group of Osage elders acknowledge that with white men in their town now, their children will be indoctrinated (in a fashion) into white, Western culture; as true as this is, it's both shocking and understandable that the reaction among the other Osage members is an intense outcry of sorrow and heartbreak. That sorrow and heartbreak carries through the film, primarily in the person of Mollie, brought to life with incredible passion by the remarkable Lily Gladstone. Gladstone, previously best known for appearing in Kelly Reichardt films like "Certain Women," is a lightning rod of a performer, with Mollie's intelligence communicated through silence as much as through anything else. In her initial scenes, as she carries herself with an enigmatic air akin to the Mona Lisa, Gladstone almost acts DiCaprio off the screen, matching his charisma with a vivacity of her own.
It also means that as Mollie and Ernest's relationship slowly curdles, the film gets darker and darker as she grows weary and ill. Like other members of the Osage tribe, she's more prone to ill health, here in the form of diabetes. But as King continues pushing Ernest, the hapless latter man is encouraged to add something "to slow her down" to her daily insulin regimen, eventually leaving Mollie bed-ridden, barely able to move, and prone to hallucinations.
No mention of the murders
The callousness of men like King and Ernest (who seems at first to try to do right by Mollie, before you grasp that he's as much his uncle's nephew as he's truly besotted with his wife) is matched by so many other white men within the town, even those who don't actively attack and kill the Osage or anyone who would offer to help them. Mollie's repeated attempts to get to even a few hundred dollars of her own money are stopped (as they are for so many other members of the tribe) because the white bankers have deemed them all "incompetent" and that they need a white proxy. Scorsese is, as he always does, able to find pitch-black gallows humor in some of the horrors depicted on screen, offering up a chilling bit of levity. In one particularly horrific example, we see one of King's various henchmen (Louis Cancelmi) try to understand if he could get his hands on headrights to oil if he adopts and almost promptly kills some Native American children.
That story comes out during the final stretch of "Killers of the Flower Moon," once Tom White and his fellow agents are able to tighten the proverbial noose around King, bringing him to court and attempting to get Ernest to testify against him. DiCaprio, it should be said, is predictably excellent here though in a weaker character type than has been the case with his other Scorsese collaborations. (Even his duly appointed Federal Marshal in "Shutter Island" is more of a man of action than Ernest is, the latter constantly trying to figure out how he can just laze around in his post-war haze.) De Niro is also excellent, getting to play a more put-together sociopath than a man like Max Cady in "Cape Fear" or Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver." The ease with which King is able to shift from speaking English to the Osage tongue, the comfort he has in reaching out to the family members who've lost loved ones whose deaths he engineered, is all brought masterfully to life by De Niro.
There is only so much triumph that can be had in "Killers of the Flower Moon." Yes, eventually, King is sent to jail, because eventually Ernest does testify against him. (Ernest is brought back from that brink at first by King's vociferous defense attorney, played briefly by Oscar winner Brendan Fraser.) And eventually Mollie does get better — because the pre-FBI agents literally rescue her from her house so that Ernest can no longer dose her with more than just insulin. But even though Mollie gets back to better health, it can only last for so long. After a final confrontation with Ernest, in which he lies once more to Mollie about what medicine he gave her, Scorsese pulls off his final trick.
Biopics and period pieces about real people and events have this habit of showing you the real people in the end. "Killers of the Flower Moon" could have gone in this direction, but just as it's not the first film of Scorsese's to feature real people in unexpected venues (like Georges Melies in "Hugo"), the film veers away from expectation in its last moments. Instead of getting a series of archival photos and text, Scorsese brings us to a gussied-up radio-show performance, with the notion being that the film we've just seen is a more rigorously detailed adaptation of a true-crime show from the late 1940s or early 1950s, replete with in-person sound effects, a rat-a-tat announcer, various cast members (including Jack White of The White Stripes, one of a number of musicians in key roles here), each walking us through what happened to Hale, Ernest, and others. The last key person in the film whose epilogue is given is Mollie, and when he first steps on screen to deliver the epilogue, you could almost gasp at the sight of Scorsese himself. Scorsese gets the last literal word in the film, looking into the camera as he states that when Mollie died at age 50 of diabetes, her obituary had "no mention of the murders" that had defined so much of her life.
Though Scorsese gets the last word, he does not allow himself to be the last thing you see in "Killers of the Flower Moon". That would be a bird's-eye view of the Osage tribe itself, as the camera slowly zooms out from a close-up to reveal them in circular patterns in a tribal dance. It would be all too easy to have made "Killers of the Flower Moon" into a white-savior story — reports are that the original script was more about Tom White investigating the murders and how the eventual FBI saved the day. That the resulting film is as much about the criminals as their victims does not mean that this is a film lifting up those criminals. The banality of evil is on full display in "Killers of the Flower Moon," with each death more painful than the last; though previous Scorsese pictures like "Goodfellas" or "The Wolf of Wall Street" may be perversely entertaining in how they capture the slick men robbing or killing people surrounding them, this film is equally perceptive without giving into some cheap thrill. "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a tragedy of mammoth proportions, and one of Martin Scorsese's very best pictures.