150 Word Review: 'Killers of the Flower Moon' (2023)

American horror story

Photo: Apple

A younger director may have turned Killers of the Flower Moon into a crime drama or a revisionist western. But in the twilight of his career, Martin Scorsese rejects familiar Hollywood genres and performs an autopsy instead.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a surprisingly clear-eyed look at white supremacy. Scorsese slices open the corpse of American history and forces his audience to watch him examine the rot.

In 1920s Oklahoma, the Osage Native American tribe struck oil and became rich. What happens next is a slow-motion slaughter.

This movie belongs to Lily Gladstone's astonishing performance as a quiet but determined woman slowly being poisoned by her white husband, a dullard conscripted into a vast, methodical conspiracy by his smiling uncle to murder the Osage one by one and steal their fortunes. This is a long movie. Over three hours. But it's never boring. It is, however, horrific. And true.

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