Hostiles

Rating

C+ (3/5)

Three words

Authentic, Western, Dark

Brief Review

Hostiles follows an army captain in the late 1800’s who has spent most of his career fighting against Native Americans. Now, the captain is forced to escort a Native American family back to their homeland. This movie provides a realistic depiction of the brutal violence and general hardships of those living at the time. Hostiles really is a hard one for me to describe. It is not a bad movie, there was a lot that I liked about it, but ultimately it just didn’t totally work for me. The easiest thing for me to say is that it was simply too long and slow. The movie should have been shorter and the plot should have moved along faster. If that had been the case, this likely would have been a very solid film. The plot isn’t anything complex, it’s really just one long trip on horseback. Yet the movie was still interesting because of how authentic it felt. The trip was full of violence and hardships which is likely how it would have been in real life. However that did make for a pretty depressing movie. Christian Bale does an excellent job portraying a very conflicted US soldier and is easily the best part of the movie. Overall, the movie was a fairly sad one that will be a hit for fans of westerns, but might be a drag for many others.