Robert De Niro | DAVID DUNN

Beware the wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Killers Of The Flower Moon is the kind of film that leaves you stunned and speechless: the kind that makes you sit on uncomfortable emotions, reflect on your history, and think about all we have taken from people that we have never met. People don’t think often enough about how America was founded on stolen land, but they should. All we have done since meeting the Native American in the 17th century was kill and steal from them — and we’ve been killing and stealing from them ever since.

Martin Scorsese confronts this cold, stark truth with brutal honesty and unflinching reality. You don’t merely watch Killers Of The Flower Moon — you are devastated by it. You watch as real-life horrors unfold before your very eyes, begging that justice comes and relieves the persecuted like a breath of fresh air. It never does. In this film, a kind word is a lie. A hug is insincere. A kiss is betrayal. And the words “I love you” mean death.

Based on the nonfiction book by journalist David Grann, Killers of the Flower Moon tells the true story of the Osage Nation, who stumbled upon oil on their lands and became filthy rich. Many white Americans were jealous of the natives and their obscene amounts of wealth in 1920s Oklahoma, including William Hale (Robert De Niro), a cattle rancher who familiarized himself with the Osage’s customs and gained their trust.

After World War I ended, William’s simpleton nephew Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) comes home to live with William and his family. Once he settles in, William plants an idea to Ernest — marry an Osage woman and kill her and her family so that they can inherit their oil headrights after they die.

That woman ends up being Mollie (Lily Gladstone), whose family’s estate owns more than $7 million in oil money. As Ernest marries Mollie and they build a life together, he’s torn between his love for money and his love for family, and he ultimately has to decide which one matters to him more.

Killers Of The Flower Moon is a hard film to review because it’s a hard film to watch. Many of Martin Scorsese’s contemporary and modern-day classics are all entertaining to some degree, whether you’re talking about the dark humor and wit of Goodfellas, the spine-tingling sensations of Shutter Island, the grandiose splendor and serenity of Hugo, or the outrageousness of The Wolf Of Wall Street. Killers Of The Flower Moon is a different story. It is not a fun film by any means. It isn’t enjoyable, amusing, exciting, or gratifying. I wouldn’t even call it fulfilling.

No, the word that comes to mind is “traumatizing.” And why wouldn’t it be? You’re dealing with indigenous genocide here. I wouldn’t say Killers Of The Flower Moon is a fun watch any more than I would say Schindler’s List or 12 Years A Slave is a fun watch. In fact, going into a movie like this searching for entertainment value diminishes the film at large and the story it’s trying to tell.

Instead, Martin Scorsese pays it the respect and the seriousness it deserves. Killers Of The Flower Moon is not a traditional picture — it’s a striking and observant portrait, a vast and stunning painting filled with beautiful colors and harrowing scenes filled with violence, terror, and tragedy. The fact is you don’t enjoy Killers Of The Flower Moon — you are entranced by it. You embrace it as the experience washes over you and you feel the deep pain that the Osage have experienced in silence for generations.

While Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro have both separately teamed up with Martin Scorsese in the past, this is the first time both Academy Award-winning actors have partnered up with Scorsese at the same time, and it pays off with wonderful results. De Niro is downright hateful as William Hale, a sly and sick little scab that pretends to be a friend to the Osage people, when in reality he is the most dangerous predator there is — the kind you don’t recognize. The worst thing about his character isn’t how monstrous he is: it’s how normal he seems when he discusses genocide and plotting to take away the dead’s land and money for himself. He sounds so casual and matter-of-factly in his delivery — like he’s discussing a business strategy instead of a murder plot. For him, they may mean the same thing.

DiCaprio is the exact opposite. While De Niro is calculated and crafty in his murder schemes, DiCaprio is a bumbling fool who wouldn’t know how to tie his shoelaces if you told him they were untied. At this point in his career, Leonardo DiCaprio has played all types of characters, from the undercover cop in The Departed to the illustrious millionaire in The Great Gatsby to the frostbitten survivor in The Revenant. He’s sold all types of characters in all types of roles, but he’s never sold stupid quite as well as he does in Killers Of The Flower Moon. It may sound like I’m insulting him, but I genuinely mean that as a positive. When it comes to murder conspiracies as massive as this, every master planner needs an idiot underling to carry out his bidding. Leonardo DiCaprio plays that part to a T, and considering I’m used to seeing him as the teen heartthrob from Titanic, it was shocking to me to see no traces of him here with Ernest Berkhardt.

And the thing is his actions in the film might seem contradictory at first, but they’re really not once you understand his character’s motivations. He says at one point that he doesn’t know what he loves more: women or money. It seems like a throwaway line, but it actually informs everything his character does throughout the entire film. Because even though he’s slowly killing his wife and her family, he’s doing it through the thin veneer of love and being torn by what he loves most: his wife or her money. It’s incredibly conflicting, and DiCaprio captures that inner turmoil perfectly.

But the best performance in the film is neither of the leads. It’s actually Lily Gladstone, who up until now has had mostly supporting roles in shows like “Room 104,” “Billions” and “Reservation Dogs.” Here, she takes command of the screen and steals every single scene she’s in. She is not a victim here: she is a fierce and powerful woman, a loyal and loving daughter, mother, and sister who watches in horror as her entire family slowly perishes one at a time. With a narrative this demanding, you need an actress who can authentically channel the pain, the torment, and the generational trauma that the indigenous have felt, and Lily Gladstone nails it perfectly. I can honestly say that she gives one of my favorite performances out of the whole year, and I hope she gets a lot of recognition come awards season because she truly deserves no less.

At three hours and 26 minutes, Killers of the Flower Moon is one of Martin Scorsese’s longest films ever, second only behind 2019’s The Irishman. Does it feel long? Yes it does, but it also feels like it needed to be. This was a sprawling murder conspiracy that lasted several years and took the lives of over 60 people and shattered the lives of many more. Those people deserve to have their story told in full, uncompromising view. Quite frankly, anything shorter than three hours would have been disrespectful to those this film was dedicated to.

By the time Killers of the Flower Moon ended, I was left shaking in the theater with angry tears in my eyes. Not because of what Ernest and William had already done to the Osage, but because of how much they were allowed to take from them when they’ve already lost so much. May Ernest and William burn for eternity from the fiery coals they piled up for themselves in Hell, and may Molly and her family finally experience peace, knowing that the vibrant shades of the flower moon will shine forever.

Don’t cry. Just laugh.

The scariest thing to admit is that we have monsters living inside of ourselves. Part of the reason why Joker has amassed as much controversy as it has is because people don’t want to admit that at some level, they sympathize with a madman and a serial killer. But the thing that some people need to remember is that before they became murderers, killers, and psychopaths, these monsters were people just like you and me, and they were hurt in very profound and personal ways that would drive anyone towards insanity. Any person, through the right circumstances, can be capable of cruelty. It’s just a matter of where and how you apply the pressure.

In Joker, writer-director Todd Phillips (The Hangover trilogy) plunges headfirst into this dark and depressing place through a gritty imagining of the origin story behind Batman’s greatest enemy. Before he became the Joker, Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) was a clown, an aspiring comedian, and a son to a loving mother whom he lives with and takes care of. Arthur’s life is by no means a happy one. He regularly has to fend off attacks from criminals who try to intimidate him in the streets, he has chronic depression and several self-esteem issues, and he struggles with a neurological condition that forces him to laugh whenever he’s anxious.

But even though Arthur doesn’t have a fulfilled life, he does have a normal one for the most part. That is, until something starts to unravel inside of his splintered mind. He starts seeing people and things that aren’t actually there. He starts to become more impulsive, irrational, and erratic. And he begins to find humor in situations that would sicken and repulse any other human being. This mental and emotional decay keeps gnawing away at him until there is nothing left of Arthur Fleck. All that’s left is the Joker.

Before this movie’s release, one commentator remarked that in 1989, you created the Joker by throwing him into a vat of acid. In 2019, you created the Joker by throwing him into society. That is essentially how Todd Phillips approaches the character in this film. In fact, for more than half of the movie’s runtime, Phillips doesn’t even allude to the Joker persona or what he ends up meaning to the Batman mythos. For the most part, Joker is a social observation on mankind’s flaws and how they whittle away at our moral integrity. While I was watching, I was surprised to find that the movie doesn’t play as much like a comic book flick as it does a psychological tragedy. The fact that it just happens to feature a comic book character is just the icing on the cake.

I was reminded by another movie while watching Arthur Fleck’s descent into madness, and that was Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver. Both movies feel a lot like they are about the same person. Both feature mostly whole people who are going through serious trials and tribulations. Both characters are pieces of a broken world and are trying to make sense of it all. Both start going through a moral and mental decay that wears at the people they once were. And both start committing violent and deranged acts that fit in with their twisted senses of justification.

The movie is, in and of itself, a condemnation of the Joker’s villainy. It has to be, otherwise it threatens to embody the same evil that the Joker himself does. What’s fascinating is that the movie doesn’t just focus on the Joker, but rather all of the elements that help contribute to who he eventually becomes. The movie touches on several issues such as wealth inequality, mental health, infidelity, gun control, entertainment, anarchy, and so many other themes that you would least expect in a comic book movie like this. You wouldn’t think that these serious topics would fit into a movie about the Joker, yet they fit perfectly like pieces into a messy and chaotic puzzle. It’s very easy to simply write Joker off as psychotic and blame all of his cruelty on craziness. It’s much harder to take a deeper look at what turned Arthur Fleck into a murderer and address some of those contributors that had a hand in creating the Joker in the first place.

Since the movie is at its core a character observation, so much of the movie rests on Joaquin Phoenix’s scrawny shoulders as both Arthur Fleck and the Joker. He never buckles under the pressure. Not once. He plays both sides to the character in a beautiful and mesmerizing fashion, playing a meek and cowardly fellow in one beat and then a deranged and psychotic killer clown in another. He embodies the nuances of both characters perfectly and never breaks character in the movie’s 122-minute run time. If Joaquin isn’t at least nominated for Best Actor at the Oscars next year, the ceremony deserves to be boycotted.

You need to be warned that this is not a Batman movie by any means and is not meant for the regular superhero moviegoing public. This movie is equally inappropriate for any children younger than 18, as there is a lot of profanity, blood, gore, and disturbing images. Likewise, there’s also a larger conversation to be had about how movies like Joker humanizes deplorable human beings and gives insight to the horrible actions they carry out.

My argument is that these figures were already humanized through their situations and struggles – the movie’s challenge is showing us that without veering into preachiness or self-absorption. We already know that everything Joker does in the movie is reprehensible and wrong, just like we did for the Italian mobsters in The Godfather, or the gangsters in Goodfellas, or the hitmen in Pulp Fiction. The scary part is not caring when we cross that line – when we intentionally blur it or sometimes erase it altogether because we’ve lost any sense of moral integrity. In those moments, you can’t cry anymore because you’ve run out of tears to shed. All you can do is laugh.

DAVID DUNN

Film Critic. Analyst. Devotee.

Tag Archives: Robert De Niro

“KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON” REVIEW (✫✫✫✫)

“JOKER” Review (✫✫✫✫)