Hostiles

As with every genre, the Western is having a bit of a mini-revival at the moment with filmmakers using its desolate locales and wanton hostility to make a comment on current politics and international relations. We’ve seen Tarantino release two brilliant examples recently in Django Unchained and The Hateful Eight, the spectacular The Revenant and HBO’s brilliant Westworld TV adaptation and Netflix’s Godless. You could argue that War For The Planet Of The Apes picks up these tropes as well and The Magnificent Seven attempted to but did it poorly.

Hostiles is the latest example to jump on this growing trend and brings Christian Bale back to our screens after a bit of time MIA.

Bale is the best thing in this film as Joe; a 19th century Army Officer about to retire at the end of the ‘Indian Wars’ but tasked with one final mission: transport an imprisoned Cheyenne Chief back to his homeland on the President’s orders.

What ensues is an extremely linear journey riddled with trouble as Bale, alongside Rosamund Pike’s Rosalie, herself the victim of a Comanche attack, move respectively away from bigotry and fear.

For a film ostensibly about Native American relations (and with all the modern parallels this attempts to comment on) those involved don’t get a huge amount to do. The travelling Cheyennes are portrayed as wise, sympathetic and peaceful, in stark contrast to Joe’s scathing comments of them early on, but are left with a handful of lines and the relationship that develops between the disparate group is touching but feels a little unearned despite the plus-two hour runtime.

The barbaric Comanches, meanwhile, are introduced brilliantly in the opening scene and are suggested as the villains of the piece but are quickly dispatched not even a third in.

It feels like Hostiles tries to capture the feeling of the aforementioned The Revenant with its long journey storyline but, whilst the locations are picturesque and captured beautifully, it doesn’t have the same grit and threat. Suffice to say the fan is hit with the brown stuff almost every time the group make camp but some of the shootouts are a little unclear and not all of the deaths hit home.

It’s another solid modern Western with some good themes, beautiful scenery and a nicely rounded story but it’s not quite as meaningful as it perhaps thinks it is. Bale and Pike put in brilliant performances but the pacing serves to hinder the drama.

3 stars ***