h-Broad's review about Killers of the Flower Moon(2023)

ÒTIMO FILME. Boa adaptação do conto.

I have stopped myself from watching a movie for almost two months, and I have been reluctant to ask myself why. Today, after watching this film, I think I finally have some answers. I'm convinced that it's because movies these days have become "uninteresting". The most important aspect of a film is being entertaining, the opposite of tedium, narcissism and self-indulgence that is this film.

It's such a drag and the trailer itself already pretty much revealed the plot. There is zero character development throughout the show. DiCaprio's character lacks a stance of his own and is constantly being influenced by others. I couldn't even tell if he actually had any internal conflicts or struggles. And just when you thought that the story would start to focus on the resistance from the Native Americans, it shifted its emphasis to the involvement of the FBI. However, I have to admit that the storytelling aspect of the film is still competently handled.

Taking the story of a corruption case from a particular era as the foundation, the show becomes largely an observation and introspection of its own characters. The director took a step futher from The Irishman in his experiment with longer runtimes and slower pacing. Leonardo DiCaprio manages to deliver his best performance yet. After watching both the endings of this film and the previous one, I have a feeling that Martin Scorsese has been taking his latest works an opportunity to bid farewell to his audience.

It's a solid, by the books film of Martin Scorsese. The narrative does convey a sense of epicness and the show doesn't feel draggy, though I still feel that it could have been trimmed down a little. The cinematography is aesthetically pleasing, like the farm fire scene. The music compliments the film well without being intrusive, like the series of drumbeats at the end. Leonardo DiCaprio delivers a steady performance, but when compared to Robert De Niro, his acting seems somewhat rigid and his character tends to make stupid decisions when the plot demands it. Robert De Niro, on the other hand, did an excellent job in making his calculative and hypocritical character come to live.

This film is a 200 minutes' worth of tedium. Hearing actual snoring coming from the front rows was actually more entertaining than the film itself. Ultimately, the villains in this film are way too shallow and one-dimensional. The true horror of the story lies not in how evil the uncle is or how foolish the nephew is, but rather in how almost everyone in Oklahoma in the 1920s was consent and involved in the massacre of the Osage tribe. Even those who helped with the investigation were killed. A24 should have given a young director the opportunity to make this film into some sort of alternative horror film. Martin Scorsese fails to capture the absurdity and horror of the actual tragedy.

This film is horrifying in that it depicts how the indigenous people are slowly being taken away of their wealth, land and their lives. While the male protagonist is having the most screentime being the star of the show, the other righteous characters barely had any moments to shine. Perspectives from the female characters are basically non-existent. The abuse of power and authority is being portrayed as normal and expected. This is Martin Scorsese's worst film in terms of character portrayal. Watching it for three and a half hours is a torture if I'd be completely honest.

Superb visuals and soundtracks with a second-rate slow-paced story; and it’s slow for the sake of being slow and pretentious. Based on a true story, it has not captured the purest evil of human nature similar to that in There Will Be Blood, and not even like The Irishman which captures the sense of tragedy and fate of various characters. Only one single viewpoint of the perpetrators can't support this super-long duration. Numerous long shots, depressing soundtracks, Leonardo's excessive emotional outbursts, as well as his status as the culprit, means the overall presentation was counterproductive and left me with no sense of emotional involvement at all. It might have been better if it had followed the original novel and told the story from a crime-solving perspective rather than a criminal's perspective. Barely a 7 out of 10.