"Killers of the Flower Moon"

 

What an excellent movie Martin Scorsese's new project! It's a long movie - three and a half hours long - but the time doesn't feel heavy. I was pleased to see so many character actors from the Southwest Noir world - "No Country For Old Men," "Breaking Bad," "El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie," and "Better Call Saul."

What a creep that Ernest Burkhart is, that Leonardo DiCaprio plays so well!  Burkhart does whatever he is told!:

What Roth’s adaptation does allow is for “Killers of the Flower Moon” to blossom into a compellingly multi-faceted character study about the men behind the massacre. Even more importantly, it invites the most recent of Scorsese’s late-career triumphs to become the most interesting of the many different movies that comprise it: A twisted love story about the marriage between an Osage woman and the white man who — unbeknownst to her — helped murder her entire family so that he could inherit the headrights for their oil fortune. 

That sepia-toned saga of slow-poisoned self-denial is sustained by the best performance of Leonardo DiCaprio’s entire career. The former matinee idol has never been shy about playing low-lifes and scum-bums, but his nuanced and uncompromising turn as the cretinous Ernest Burkhart mines new wonders from the actor’s long-standing lack of vanity.