Hostiles Tries To Be A Woke Western But It Can't Quite Get It's Eyes Open

I've been beating the drum on director Scott Cooper for some time now, mainly thanks to how highly I thought of his 2013 feature Out of The Furnace (his 2009 motion picture Crazy Heart is also notably good). Thought it received an overall divisive critical reception upon initial release, I myself thought it was a great movie that managed to take the basic premise of a revenge action movie and imbue both a terrific Christian Bale performance and thoughtful grimness into it. Taking my love for his past works in mind, it breaks my heart to say that Scott Cooper's newest movie Hostiles, handily his most ambitious feature yet in terms of themes and scope, is a mess and an unpleasant one at that.


Captain Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale), like a police officer in a movie who ends up tragically dying in the middle of a shootout, is just a little bit of ways before retirement, but before he can hang up his hat and & gun, he's gotta escort dying elderly prisoner Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) across the country to Montana. That's the location Yellow Hawk wants to be buried in, a request the President of The United States see's fit to put into action but one that Blocker refuses to follow since he holds a hatred for what Yellow Hawk and his men did to his fellow soldiers in times of war decades ago (the film takes place in 1892). Blocker doesn't really have a choice in the matter, so he and a small band of soldiers are off to escort Yellow Hawk and his family to Montana.

Along the way, they pick up Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), whose family was killed by Native American raiders just a short while ago and the group develops a greater sense of fondness for Yellow Hawk and his family. Y'know, Captain Joseph J. Blocker may have thought he was changing Yellow Hawk's life, but in reality, Yellow Hawk was changing his. Yes, this is yet another tale of a white person learning that people of color are (GASP!) human beings told through the perspective of that same aforementioned white person. That's already a pretty trite narrative path that's been done to death, but the way Scott Cooper's screenplay handles it adds a sense of befuddlement to this lazy storytelling choice.

Blocker gets over his hatred towards Yellow Hawk and his family early on after a run-in with the same pack of warriors that killed Rosalie's family and that renders him a stagnant character for the majority of the rest of the movie. All that's left for Blocker to do is murmur and mope for the rest of the story and goodness gracious does that get tedious fast. Little in the way of personality is given to either Yellow Hawk and his various family members or the various accompanying Blocker on his mission to Montana. Rosalie Quaid is the only character here that feels like an actual person and that's mostly due to Rosamund Pike doing an excellent job subtly incorporating mannerisms that show how her character is in the midst of experiencing prolonged trauma after losing her loved ones to gruesome circumstances.

There are elements of Cooper's writing that do suggest some thoughtfulness, most notably a willingness to let macho Western male characters that could have been played by John Wayne decades ago express their emotions in ways traditionally defined as "feminine" like crying, for instance, that's probably the most subversive facet of the whole project. A willingness to also confront colonialism in the form of one supporting character outright telling Yellow Hawk that white colonists took this land from Native Americans & that white people can never properly apologize for all the horrors they've wrought to the Native population is bold for sure but it doesn't feel like even then Hostiles is bringing anything new to the table in terms of exploring racial dynamics from this era.

The lack of depth in the themes of Hostiles feel reinforced by how plodding the gloomy tone is. Meant to show how truly gnarly & repugnant the Old West is (think of it as the serious version of A Million Ways To Die In The West then), Hostiles instead just feels like it's beating the audience over the head with a sledgehammer with it's dark tone. Characters talk about murder, blood, death and a character played by Ben Foster even goes on a tangent about a man's testicles being ripped off, but all the viciousness just doesn't up to much. The omnipresent downbeat vibes aren't in service of larger weighty themes and they don't result in scenes that are memorably powerful to watch on a visceral level, so the specific tone of Hostiles just feels like another element of the film that doesn't add up to anything.

You know a film isn't working all that well when even Christian Bale, one of my favorite modern-day dramatic actors, seems to be on Autopilot as he dredges up his best "serious" facial expression and grumbles his lines. Wes Studi is tragically underutilized while character actors Jesse Plemons and Ben Foster make the most out of their thinly written roles.  As said before Rosamund Pike gives the best performance here and she's the only real element of Hostiles that sticks with you after the dreary film is over in a good way. Otherwise, the tragic misfire Hostiles feels like it substitutes actual gravitas with heavy doses of forgettable gloominess. Watch Scott Cooper's Out of The Furnace instead, that one at least uses it's sullen aesthetic properly!