Writer: Scott Cooper (from a manuscript by Donald E. Stewart)
Director: Scott Cooper
In the 1890s grizzled, veteran Army Captain Joseph Blocker (Bale) is given an assignment to escort dying Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Studi) back to his homelands in Montana. The two men have previously lost friends at the hands of each other in many bloody battles but that chequered history could turn out to be the least of their problems in a journey fraught with danger, which is further complicated when their travelling party encounters a widow (Pike) in the wilderness...
If you saw the trailer for Hostiles and thought it was an action movie let me stop you right there, pardner. Yes, there is action, but those sequences are few and far between. This is a film about conflict but the verbal and the internal varieties are given as much, if not more, precedence than the scalpings and the flying bullets.
Oh yes, if you were expecting line 'em up, shoot 'em down sequences then let me stop you right there, pardner - if you hadn't already stopped from when I said you should stop right there the previous time. The bursts of violence here are grim, up close, personal, down and dirty affairs in which the you feel the pain of its victims. Flashy, glamorous gunfights are not the order of the day.
Hostiles takes its time in putting its characters through the wringer and its slow pace may mean that some won't stay the course, especially when it's piling on the misery (which it does almost relentlessly). However, for those willing to stick with it there are rewards to be found, mostly in the excellent performances.
Bale is never less than convincing as Blocker, worn down by a career drenched with the blood of others and wondering if he's truly beyond salvation. Studi is terrific, bringing an air of quiet authority and wisdom but also weighed down by the violence of his past. Then there's Pike, whose portrayal of grief is so strong that it's almost unbearable to watch in places.
The script doesn't quite fulfil its promise, its meditations on who exactly the bad guys are being a touch heavy-handed in places - tagline: We are all hostiles - and the denouement can't resist trowelling on even more bleakness, double-underlining a point that had already been made earlier. It then gives way to a final scene which arguably ties things up somewhat too neatly but, given what's gone before, at least sends you out of the cinema clinging to some form of hope.
A modern Western which utilises the classic template of that genre while trying to portray that period of history from a different viewpoint, Hostiles doesn't quite get the balance right and it isn't the revisionist masterpiece it so diligently strives to be. That doesn't stop it from being a damn good drama though and it's well worth watching for the work of its exemplary cast.
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