Hostiles
Genre: Civil War, Drama, Mustache, Western
The Good
The Bad
A movie full of bleak occurrences that manages to suggest America has a soul, and that it one day yet might find it.
Hostiles is a dire and violent look at the old American west with thematic concerns planted firmly in our present. It explores a transitional period after the Civil War when Injun killers (like Christian Bale’s Capt. Joseph Blocker) are still alive to recount their battles with savages, but when attitudes toward Native Americans are beginning to shift. It’s nothing particularly new in cinema to retread tropes of old west violence with a view to White American savagery, but Hostiles does a deft job characterizing Blocker as a man at a moral and personal crossroads. He reluctantly accepts the mission to escort an aging Cheyenne chief and old enemy (Wes Studi) back to his own land to die in peace, and must wrestle with the demons that are awoken along the way. Rory Cochran and Ben Foster basically play two versions of what Bale might become: one White man broken by shame and another consumed by hate. Rosamund Pike’s character is perhaps the weakest link (though not the weakest performance) as a disenfranchised mother whose family has been wiped out by Comanches. She bears a heavy burden but gets little to do after she joins Blocker’s crew except to wait around for the bittersweet ending.
