Hostiles

By Linda Winsh-Bolard


The trick is to get pass the opening scene. Everything in that opening rings false. Here is a substantial dwelling, in the middle of nowhere, attacked by Comanche shooting like this was OK Corral. The brutality is more in sync with director Scott Cooper (Black Mass) mode of operation than reality. The West was cruel, incredibly cruel, just not like this.

In 1892 settlers had usually small cabins, Comanche did not have enough ammunition to spray it around, and attacks on single settlers were rare, because it did not pay off to face the consequences. I cringed. I tried to concentrate on the acting, how fear played out when Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike ) and her family are attacked, but even so, I cringed.

The story than jumps to Cavalry Captain Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale), brutal in his hatred to Native Americans, shown when he tortures an Apache family, who is ordered to escort dying Cheyenne War Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family back to his land in Montana. Blocker hates the idea, hates Yellow Hawk and foresees complications, but this is his last order before retirement and he takes it.

The trail will bring them to the woman. Rosalee is the only survivor. Blocker decides to escort her to safety. On the road, they meet Comanche, brutal fur trappers, a man from Blocker’s past, a former soldier called Foster, who is to be taken to his hanging , and finally, the settlers.
Hostiles play off men; all the men are silent, brutal and wounded in the tradition of westerns. The women are the “betters”, though not less skilled, killing included. So was Annie Oakley.

Hostiles also play the whites; again like most western. Wes Studi has so few lines, and so little to do, that a lesser actor, Studi is a superb one, would have become a set dressing. The rest of the Cheyenne, Apache and Comanche are a set dressing. It is their presence, not their actions that allow the plot to move on.

As in a classic road movie, the main characters, which come down the escort and Rosalee, face dangers they expected and those they did not. They also face themselves, their own ghosts, forced to accept who they are. The Native Americans are slaughtered, silently.
There is no broader moral or historical lesson here. In brutal conditions, people often become brutal. They kill to live, or for profit. The West offered a lot of profit, as long as everyone who lived there was killed. When the killing of the original population was completed, the newcomers turned on each other. History is written by the winners.

Based on a manuscript by the late Donald Stewart (“The Hunt for the Red October”), which goes a long way to explain, why this is such traditional declaration of “we are the power” , as of, we the Americans, film.
I cringed some more, when Bale despairs over his lost friends and over the land; whose land? screamed in my head. Whose loss? Despite some attempts at showing more than one side, what I saw, was justification of genocide.

Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl) is very good as the woman who lost it all, hating the idea that others might be just as hurt. Wes Studi, as said, shines. Christian Bale exudes his usual rage and venom. You never even notice that Adam Beach is there, I doubt he has more than two lines. Visual effects create the sense of past sttlemtns and landscapes. Technology here serves the story, not the other way around, but do not look for the route Rosalee and Joseph take to Montana; you will not find it in real world.

There is no Fort Beringer, and never was. All that is a set and visual effects. VFX , 671 of them, are present all over the film. The scalping scene, the run with baby, the dying, the set, the land. The film was shot in New Mexico but visual effects changed the landscape to create an illusion of Fort Winslow at the foot of Rockies, Colorado and Valley of the Bear in Montana. Visual effects supervisor, Jake Braver, gave a detailed interview to VFXV describing what technique was used, where and how difficult it all was. You have no idea of what kind of troubles a swishing horse tails can create!

Hostiles had difficulties to find a USA distributor; NetflixChristianBaleHostiles.docx has a DVD.

Directed by Scott Cooper

Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi