Once feared dead but found instead only sleeping, the Western has sprung back to strong and compelling life with the intense, involving “Hostiles” being the latest case in point.
Written and directed by Scott Cooper and powered by a dynamic trio of interwoven performances by Christian Bale, Wes Studi and Rosamund Pike, “Hostiles” grabs you by the throat and holds on for the duration.
While the protagonists and what they go through can sound familiar, Cooper, working from unfinished material by the late Donald E. Stewart (“Missing” and a trio of Tom Clancy adaptations) has made sure that what we see surprises us, not just in terms of plot but also in who his characters are and how they act.
A tale of physical, emotional and even moral survival, “Hostiles” deals in people pushed to their limits and then some, individuals marked in the deepest way by the violence of the frontier.
More than that, and this is key, each of the film’s central figures, though still alive, has reason to feel his or her life is as good as over.
The film’s title gives an immediate sense of what is to come. On the most obvious level, Western fans know that “hostiles” is the descriptor the U.S. Cavalry traditionally used when talking about armed and dangerous Native American opponents.
The word, however, has a more specific meaning here, referring as well to two implacable enemies, Joseph Blocker (Bale), a captain in the U.S. Cavalry, and Yellow Hawk (Studi), a war chief from the Northern Cheyenne who has been an Army prisoner for seven years.
Not to put too fine a point on it, these men completely despise each other — they are intractable enemies of long standing whose mutual hostility is based not on philosophical differences but concrete actions both men have taken that neither one regrets in the least. That is not the end of “Hostiles,” however, just the beginning.
Before either man is met, the film opens in 1892 with shattering catastrophe overtaking frontier wife and mother Rosalee Quaid (Pike) at the hands of a band of terrifying Comanche (the same tribe that figured in the classic “The Searchers”).
The thickly mustachioed and goateed Capt. Blocker, for his part, is introduced listlessly overseeing the sadistic roundup of the last of the remaining Apache opposition outside his Fort Berringer, N.M., post.
About to retire, Blocker, who over the years has learned Yellow Hawk’s Northern Cheyenne dialect, is given one last assignment, very much against his will.
The chief is dying of cancer and the president, as much as a public relations gesture as anything, is allowing him and his family, including his son Black Hawk (Adam Beach), to return to their ancestral lands in Montana. The captain is to lead the escort party.
Impeccably played by the veteran Studi, perhaps best known as the dangerous Magua in 1992’s “The Last of the Mohicans,” Yellow Hawk is no misunderstood pacifist.
As in Cooper’s previous films, the acting — including an unexpected Peter Mullan as a lieutenant colonel and the always compelling Ben Foster as a sergeant — is excellent across the board. And having key dialogue between Blocker and Yellow Hawk take place in subtitled Northern Cheyenne adds a kind of resonance to those sections.
Its period and plot line mandate that the nature and consequences of prolonged violence is one of “Hostiles’” strongest themes. The key question it poses is not one of responsibility, however (“We’re all guilty of something,” one character says), but whether we have to continue to be prisoners of what we’ve done in the past.
MOVIE REVIEW
“Hostiles”
Grade: B
Starring Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike and Wes Studi. Directed by Scott Cooper.
Rated R for strong violence and language. Check listings for theaters. 2 hours, 15 minutes.
Bottom line: A Western with dynamic trio of acting
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