Oklahoma, 1 9 2 0s. War veteran Ernest Burkhart moves in to live with his uncle William King Hale, who persuades him to meet and marry Osage Native Indian woman Mollie. Ever since the Osage Indians found oil on their land, they became rich, yet the law mandates that they must have a white legal guardian who "approves" their expenses. Ernest and Mollie get three kids. As numerous Osage Indians get murdered under mysterious circumstances one by one, but no investigation is taken, Mollie and others campaign to President Calvin Coolidge for help, who sends an FBI team. Ernest gives poison to Mollie hidden inside the insulin at the behest of Hale. They discover Hale ordered the murders so that he and his white associates will inherit all the oil rights and get its money. Hale is arrested and Ernest decides to testify against him in the court. Both are sentenced.
A fascinating reconstruction of an unjustifiably forgotten historical event, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is a movie made out of conscience and sense for justice, a one that picked up this real-life case from anonymity and made it timeless and unforgettable. The bizarre conspiracy scheme in which white men married Osage Indian women, then killed their family members little by little to inherit all the oil rights and their wealth is a dark chapter in American history, and it is wonderfully charitable and noble from director Martin Scorsese to create this movie monument to the victims of this crime. It is in a way a 'social issue-movie' and 'social activism-movie', yet it refuses to have its themes as the only ingredient, and instead takes the story, characters and craftsmanship as its center, which gives it versatility. One major flaw is that the crucial character of Mollie is strangely underwritten and underexplored. It almost plays out like a Hitchcock crime film, but its elements also again inadvertently echoe Scorsese's "Goodfellas" (especially in the finale when Ernest realizes the crime conspiracy might even come after him).
At 3.5 hours, the movie is definitely overlong and requires a lot of focus, yet at the same time it is difficult to find any sequence that could be cut, since the authors undertook a colossal task of inserting as many details as possible since all these moments happened and were not fictional. Scorsese directs the movie in a rather standard, routine way, with only some scenes having that ingenuity from his earlier career (such as the owl entering inside the house, as a symbol for incoming death), yet when the storyline is so intruiging and engaging as here, nothing much could have been added to it, anyway. Robert De Niro is great as the hypocritical villain Hale who publicly feigns to be a good friend of the Osage Indians, even offering financial reward for any information about the murders, yet secretly plots and schemes to hire killers to eliminate certain Indians as for the chips to fall into his favor. In one memorable scene, Hale is sitting in his car, telling instructions: "Tell Ramsey it's time. We're off to Fort Worth." As Ernest just stares at him with a blank, confused face, Hale angrily adds: "Look at me like this makes sense." "Killers of the Flower Moon" is as close to a modern movie coming to that coveted 'golden age of Hollywood' style as it gets, taking its time to create a blend of all the right stuff to deliver a nutritional, mature product.
Grade:+++
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