Hostiles (Film): Review.

martinmcfly (59)in #film • 5 years ago

The Westerns fascinate me and when I found out that Christian Bale would star in one I immediately wrote it down to my list, after a while its time come, so yesterday I decided to take a look.

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Year: 2017
Category: Western.
Director: Scott Cooper.
Cast: Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Jesse Plemons, Adam Beach, Rory Cochrane, Ben Foster.

Plot

In 1892 Captain Joseph J. Blocker is charged with escorting Yellow Hawk to his ancestral lands, a Cheyenne leader whom he hates because is responsible for the death of several of his colleagues, and although he does not want to do it, he is pressured and extorted to do so.

Opinion

At the end of the 19th century, a Comanche war group attacked a settler's hut, killing the owner and his three daughters, keeping alive only his wife, Rosalee Quaid, who was left in a state of post-traumatic shock. She will be found by Captain Joseph J. Blocker and his subordinates, who by President Harrison's orders, are under obligation to take a Cheyenne war chief and four of his relatives back to their tribal lands.

As I have said on previous occasions the Western genre is my favorite because of the way it tells stories when the work is well done. The direction by Scott Cooper was really good, the shots are well done and the pace, despite being slow at times, is very good, without becoming a perfect job, as there are a couple of moments when I noticed some abrupt skips. The script is excellent, it deepens the development and the philosophical and moral problems of the main characters very well.

It is not a film in which the action scenes occur at every moment, the predominant aspect of the film is the journey made by the characters, and the transformation they have trying to purge their sins and give up their grudges, leaving aside the differences and helping each other. The film is more on reflection than action, however, this does not mean that we do not see some scenes in which the guns take over the screen, the first ones are shown only when the movie starts, and their goal is not simply to entertain, but the director has put them there so that we understand the hardness of the conflict and the two sides of the coin, where the innocents are the ones who pay with blood.

The performances are great, especially the work done by Christian Bale and Rosamund Pike, in whose characters lies the weight of the evolution and development that history has, and that perform their jobs with all the talent they have, both managed to convince me. It was interesting to see Ben Foster in the film after having seen him in Hell or High Water, and although he does not have as much prominence here as he did in that film, he still does a very good job. The rest of the actors do a very acceptable job, without any highlighting more than the others.

Finally I must say that it is an entertaining film, but slow, as the story that is being told requires it, the evolution of events requires a certain evolution on the part of the characters, and for that it is necessary that each time the characters dismount the horse there must be a pause.