Hostiles (2017) [Blu-ray]
Adventure | Drama | Western

Tagline: We are all... Hostiles.

In 1892, a legendary Army captain reluctantly agrees to escort a Cheyenne chief and his family through dangerous territory.

Storyline: In 1892, after nearly two decades of fighting the Cheyenne, the Apache, and the Comanche natives, the United States Cavalry Captain and war hero, Joseph Blocker, is ordered to escort the ailing Cheyenne chief, Yellow Hawk--his most despised enemy--to his ancestral home in Montana's Valley of the Bears. Nauseated with a baleful anger, Joseph's unwelcome final assignment in the feral American landscape is further complicated, when the widowed settler, Rosalie Quaid, is taken in by the band of soldiers, as aggressive packs of marauding Comanches who are still on the warpath, are thirsty for blood. In a territory crawling with hostiles, can the seasoned Captain do his duty one last time? Written by Nick Riganas

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 19, 2018 It's perhaps indicative of just how far so-called "revisionist Westerns" have come that Hostiles begins with a terrifying scene featuring a horde of Comanche warriors slaughtering a homesteader and several of his children. It's scenes like this, albeit admittedly nowhere near as graphic as this particular opening sequence is, that used to define the old school western, where it was typically cowboys versus Indians (as they were unavoidably called back then), with the Indians displaying signs of inherent "savagery" and the good, civilized cowboys (or others) fighting them off and prevailing, establishing Manifest Destiny for one and all (or at least those of certain non-Native American ethnicities). But Hostiles quickly delivers its own none too subtle message by having the next sequence document a Native American family being violently rounded up (if not slaughtered as in the first vignette) by a bunch of almost nonchalant soldiers headed by Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale). Obviously, Hostiles is making the perhaps over obvious point that hostility tends to work both ways, and it's that simmering distrust that informs this interesting if occasionally overheated film from writer and director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, Black Mass ). Cooper reunites with his Crazy Heart star Christian Bale and in a way also traffics in some of the same melancholic emotional ambience that typified their earlier collaboration. Blocker turns out to be the sort of character Bale seems to revel in playing, a basically decent man who has been buffeted by the winds of fate and personal experience to the point that he is both emotionally tamped down and simultaneously ready to explode. Blocker has been fighting the "savages" for untold years and has the scars, both physical and emotional, to prove it, but as he discusses in an early scene with a buddy of his named Metz (Rory Cochrane), he at least is close to being mustered out with a decent pension in store. Metz himself is a Master Sergeant without much left in the way of either a career (his emotional problems have led to him being stripped of weapons) or, frankly, a personal life, and so serves as what might be seen as a warning sign for what may await Blocker if Blocker doesn't handle his own emotions successfully. Anger management definitely comes into play when Blocker is tasked with one final assignment before retirement, namely escorting an elderly chief named Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) back to his tribal lands in Montana where he's going to be allowed to die peacefully from cancer after having spent the past several years incarcerated at the New Mexico fort where Blocker has been stationed.

The shocking opening scene of Hostiles actually introduces one of the focal characters, the sole survivor of the Comanche carnage, Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike), who has seen her husband and three children slaughtered in front of her eyes. While the film takes a brief detour to then introduce Blocker and his new assignment, it predictably wends back as Blocker's company, with Yellow Hawk and his family in tow, surveys the ruins of the Quaid homestead, finding Rosalee still clutching her dead infant to her bosom while making sure everything is kept quiet for her two older children, who are "sleeping", as she tells a shocked Blocker when he peers inside the burnt out shell of what was once the Quaid farmhouse.

Hostiles begins with a rather odd epigram by D.H. Lawrence (see screenshot 21):

The essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer. It has never yet melted.


Now, it's obvious that Cooper has already highlighted certain aspects of hardness and stoicism in the characters of both Blocker and Rosalee, but he also in my estimation undercuts this depiction with a couple of early post-modernist flourishes which are both presentationally disjunctive as well as at least arguably too melodramatic. The first of these comes when Blocker is informed in no uncertain terms by his superior officer (an underutilized Stephen Lang) that he will escort Yellow Hawk back to Montana, even though Blocker has a long, violent history with the man. Blocker retreats to a field, where it seems like he's contemplating suicide, and Cooper creates a montage of sorts, with quick dissolves and jiggly cam demonstrating Blocker's emotional breakdown. Later, when Rosalee is properly introduced, she has her own breakdown as she prepares to bury her family, scraping and scratching at the ground while the soldiers stand by silently (she's already insisted that she should bury her loved ones). Both of these brief vignettes may have some emotional authenticity to them, but they both come out of nowhere, and seem almost deliberately off kilter. A much later scene involving the death of a major supporting character which brings Blocker to outright tears plays much more naturally and therefore effectively.

Plotwise, Hostiles of course links Rosalee to Blocker, both in terms of their shared road journey, and (perhaps even more predictably) as putative love interests. The overall story progression also proceeds pretty much as expected, with everyone learning to overcome inherent prejudices to see the actual human behind the "type" (so to speak). But there are a number of interesting detours this particular trek takes, including some viscerally disturbing attack scenes which leave a bevy of either wounded or deceased in their wakes, as well as a rather potent emotional subtext involving Yellow Hawk, aged and terminally ill but resilient and consigned to both his recent and inevitably soon coming fates. Studi really shines in this film in a completely, well, stoic and hard way that tends to make some of Bales' and Pike's histrionics seem a bit hyperbolic. That said, the core of this story rings true, with Bales' tendencies toward "mumble core" actually working for this extremely in folded character. If Hostiles perhaps provides a too conveniently happy ending for three characters, it at least has an almost

Hamlet sized coterie of victims to help balance the scales.

I perhaps focused a bit more on a few slight perceived shortcomings in Hostiles than my colleague Brian Orndorf did, but, that said, this is a hugely impressive film with some knockout performances and absolutely jaw dropping scenery. Lionsgate has provided a Blu-ray with top notch technical merits and a well done (if singular) supplement. Highly recommended.

[CSW] -3.1- Apart from the beautiful scenery, the movie was slow in starting, and slower afterwards. I got the point early on and it was just reiterated over and over. Although the story is dark, gritty, violent and graphic, it's the emotional connection that is supposed to gets your attention. But if you already understand the emotional connection and purpose of the portrayal, it doesn't have the impact that not understanding emotional connections would have had. This movie is solid, very well acted by everyone, and has gorgeous scenery with enough action so that the slower pace doesn't actually get too, too boring. This is an epically great movie for those who lack an understanding of the how the west began its transition from pure lawlessness and overt hostility to understanding and acceptance and eventually lawfulness.
[V5.0-A5.0] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box

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