Film Review: Hostiles

Early on in Scott Cooper’s Hostiles, Christian Bale’s grizzled, war-weary Captain Joseph J. Blocker is seen reading Caesar’s Commentarii de Bello Gallico by candlelight. A hardened veteran of the American-Indian Wars that facilitated the United States’ westward expansion toward the end of the 19^th century, Blocker’s choice of reading material is telling. Few can dispute the remarkable impact Roman ingenuity had on progressing the course of mankind. It’s said that after the fall of the Roman Empire, battlefield medicine never reached the same levels the Roman’s had achieved until World War I. That progress was delivered at the end of a sword by men like Julius Caesar, whose conquest of Gaul secured a complete military victory over the tribal-based society, annexing the entire region and killing as many as one million men, women and children as well as enslaving the same amount again in the process. Few consider Caesar anything other than a military and political genius, despite undertaking what constitutes the genocide of an entire people for little more than financial gain and territorial enlargement.

Blocker’s admiration for the Roman General is clear, referring to him as “one of the bravest men in history” in a later scene. One can assume that director Cooper is drawing parallels between the Roman conquest of Gaul and the American expansion Westward, during which between 80-98% of the entire Native American population was killed by war, famine and disease by the time we reach the events of Hostiles in 1893. Whilst two millennia has dampened sympathy for the Gallic dead and enslaved, and allowed us to focus only on the achievements of the Roman World, the effects of the American-Indian Wars and the mistreatment of the Native Americans are still reverberating today and, more importantly, were actively acknowledged at the time.

Bale’s Captain Blocker is tasked with escorting a formerly imprisoned Cheyenne family across hostile territory in order to re-settle them in their homeland. The party includes his former adversary, Chief Yellow Hawk (a superb Wes Studi), once personally responsible for the death of many of Blocker’s soliders, now an elderly man riddled with cancer and living on borrowed time. Unafraid to display his reluctance, it is only when Blocker is threatened with the removal of his pension that he agrees to the mission. The moment he is out of sight of the fort, his façade of respect for Chief Yellow Hawk and his family is dropped, and both he and his son are placed in shackles, and their female companions told to remove their traditional hair braids.

The Comanche, a brutal mutual enemy of both Blocker and his Cheyenne escorts, stalk the lands on which they are to cross. Amongst their latest victims are the husband and children of Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), who are butchered in a brutal opening scene. Blocker’s party discovers Quaid in a state of absolute shock, still nursing the bodies of her dead children, and are left with little choice but to take her with them. Whilst under the constant threat of attack from an outsider, the group is bound together as past grievances are slowly forgotten.

The premise presented by director Cooper is relatively straightforward: both Blocker and Quaid have explicit reasons to hate Native Americans – we’re shown one with barbaric realism and told about the other repeatedly. And in order to expedite their racial awakening, the pair must be put into a situation where they are able to see their Cheyenne travel companions as something other than adversaries. But the main problem with this, and with Hostiles in general, is the character of Chief Yellow Hawk, as well as his family - which includes the considerable talents of Adam Beach (Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Flags of Our Fathers) and Q’orianka Kilcher (The New World) are barely given enough screen time to register as characters.

I understand that this is Blocker’s story and, unlike the arguments surrounding the screen-time given to Native American characters in The Revenant, this isn’t based on the fact I need to see a certain amount of non-white characters in order to feel good about the world. But for a character as deeply rooted in his hatred as Blocker to change, the catalyst must surely be more than a two-dimensional plot device. For a film that seems to fancy itself as a fresh take on the Western, or an esoteric exploration of Native American relations, Hostiles doesn’t do much to break away from the presentation of Native American characters as either blood-thirsty savages or wise, mystical sages.

That isn’t to say there aren’t interesting elements about the film. Blocker’s right-hand man, Thomas Metz (Rory Cochrane), is a soldier wracked with PTSD after too many years of fighting, including some as a Confederate soldier in the American Civil War. Given a second chance by Blocker, he’s living proof of both the potential for men to forgive one another for their past transgressions and of the devastating impact of being exposed to so much violence for so long a period of time. Ben Foster, who appears in a Western with Bale for the second time following 3:10 To Yuma, plays an imprisoned solider who is also being transported with the group in order to face execution for butchering a Native American family. Asking Blocker what makes his character a hero whilst he is imprisoned as a murderer, Blocker’s answer is the verbal equivalent of a shrug, and the question remains unanswered.

Whilst Hostiles has major flaws, it is a fairly admirable and always enjoyable contribution to the modern Western genre that doesn’t shy away in its bloody presentation of that particularly violent chapter in history. Although it might not have the impact it clearly desires, it seems to have the right intentions. Its measured, patient pacing makes for a film that feels much longer than its 133 minute running time, and Cooper’s Ford-esque cinematography, packed full of sumptuous landscapes and tributes to the iconic doorway shot from The Searchers, is at times breathtaking. But it is the cast that remains Hostiles biggest asset, as almost every performance is close to flawless. Bale and Pike have never been better, whilst Studi, Beach and Kilcher, though underused, are superb with the limited screen time they are given. A supporting cast of Cochrane and Foster, as well as Stephen Lang (Tombstone), Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad), Peter Mullan (Tyrannosaur) and Paul Anderson (Peaky Blinders) adds layers of depth in quality, ensuring that there isn’t a single weak link when it comes to performance.

The politics of Hostiles are complicated, and I’m not convinced that it’s quite the film it thinks it is. Yes, it’s entertaining, beautifully shot and features stunning performances, but as a film, the structural premise is flawed and underdeveloped. And without that, the rest can only get you so far.  

Hostiles is playing at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 18 January

Hostiles Trailer