Hostiles - Review
This review of Hostiles is spoiler-free!
At this point in cinema/filmmaking, you would think that stories about Indians would be dead and buried underneath the growing racial issues in America. The American Western genre is something that we have seen tackled a lot recently whether it be on TV or film, but they often tend to sidestep the idea of the Indians in these stories. When I began to read into Hostiles and just what it was presenting on screen, I saw quite a lot of concern from critics that this film may take the damaged approach that Native Americans were all savages and villains, while the American Army was the heroes conquering these indigenous people. For me also, this was a worry because stories like that tend to reflect badly on screen and are more of a tactic that was used in the past to pump up nationalism in this country. There's no place for stories that are focused on showing us as conquerors in the present day because of the current world climate. As much as I try to avoid mixing the world with my enjoyment of a movie, I can't argue that Hostiles had a larger challenge than some others due to these concerns that I have with it facing a major audience. Well, after that long-winded introduction, let's dive into it.
Hostiles is mainly the story of one man's journey: Joseph Blocker who is a member of the United States Army. He has been given a mission to take Yellow Hawk (a Cheyenne war chief) and his family back to the Valley of the Bears in Montana. This journey leads them along the path of hostile Comanche Indians and a young woman who has lost her family to that hostile group of men. This group of travelers and misfits have to work together to get Yellow Hawk home and battle their own inner demons and conflicts between them. Honestly, the best part of Hostiles for me isn't really the overarching story because it's rather generic in the grand scheme of Western films. That isn't to say though that the story is bad because it allows for some of the best parts of the film to shine and breathe. One of those being the main characters.
I'm just going to be outright and state that Christian Bale is an absolute stud in this movie. Sure overall Hostiles has some issues but what Bale manages to do with the main character Blocker is just special. Bale has the ability to take a character with a bit of brood and make them into something great. Blocker has a dark past with Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and seeing their developing relationship is something special. Sure the circumstances around them aren't exactly the most fantastic, they really chew on scenes. Wes Studi and Bale's chemistry is incredible, in fact, Bale's chemistry with everyone in this movie is pretty stunning as a whole. If I were to point out one glaring weak point for me in this movie it is the female lead in Rosamund Pike's Rosalie Quaid. Pike really tries her best but I keep going back to one moment where she is meant to be giving a heart-wrenching reaction and it felt overly forced and contrived and I just couldn't get past it. She's a huge weak point for me where I'm sure others may have enjoyed the character.
One thing that I want to talk about with a bit more depth with this movie is the true power of history that this film manages to convey. Yellow Hawk and Blocker have a bit of a messy history making him a bit hesitant to protect him on this journey back to Montana. The way that his unit and the Cheyenne family slowly connect is absolutely stellar. Their relationship development is quiet and subtle, but you can quickly see the mental walls being broken down as trust begins to form. Scott Cooper does a fantastic thing for this movie when he allows for time to be spent on quiet conversations between characters. Multiple moments will occur where two characters are having a moment to build their characters and it's quite a change of pace in a film that deals with so much blood, pain, and death.
Speaking of death, this film has an absolute ton of it. I would venture to say that there is only one period of time for about 30 minutes where there isn't a death or time spent mourning. The group of people we have when the film comes to a close is completely different than the one at the beginning. This open interest in brutality by the director is interesting and important because it is rather honest, but also careful. Death was real and not surprising for people of this time, and I praise Cooper for being willing to tackle it in such a way. Hostiles though seems to straddle a line with its violence, where it mostly is pushed by those Comanche Indians and shows them as just plain savages, something I hoped wouldn't happen. But along with this it also is shown that they're not the usual and I'm glad they at least took the time to mention that in the film. Thinking back on the sheer brutality of Hostiles though, I do feel at times it decided to go a bit far with the violence in order to avoid spending too much time on its characters, something I would have been completely fine with.
In the end, Hostiles really is a subjective film for the masses. I can see a lot of people going in and thinking this may be on the best films of the year because it manages to keep the viewers interested, but for me, there were a few too many problems to go to that level with it. The general critic viewpoint is that this was a missed opportunity, and while I also can't go that far in the negative direction, I find myself in a middle ground that I'm quite comfortable with. Hostiles was a challenging film that for sure had to be handled carefully, and while a lot of is done with care, there are some points that I just felt could have been done differently. Along with this, having an extremely generic story that seems like it was carbon copied from previous Westerns means that it was already going to be fighting a downhill battle. Hostiles is a good film for Western fans, but it doesn't manage to make as much of an impact as I'm sure many people, including myself, hoped it would.
