Hostiles
Director: Scott Cooper
Year Released: 2017
Rating: 1.5
Captain Blocker (Christian Bale), a soldier who lost a lot of comrades fighting the Native Americans, is ordered (by the President!) to escort dying Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) to his final resting place in Montana (even though Yellow Hawk killed a lot of his own friends in the past) - along the way he meets a catatonic widow (Rosamund Pike), has to escort a convict (Ben Foster) back to jail and runs into plenty of people that want to shoot him. It's handsomely shot, but the script basically amounts to "well geez, I guess we didn't treat the Native Americans that great," which goes without saying. There's little development with the side characters - they end up dead, and it's Just Another Sad Thing That Happened, and Foster's storyline is never completed: he flees and ... welp, there he went! This is another reminder that the combination of slow motion, people looking forlorn and gorgeous scenery does not necessarily translate as "deeply poetic."
