With Jim Sabatini

Hostiles

Rated: R for strong violence, and language.
Reviewed by: Jim
Release date: December 22, 2017	Released by: Entertainment Studios

Renegade Comanche Indians commit horrible atrocities at the start of Scott Cooper's unhurried Hostiles, a conventional if blemished Western with striking locational lensing for settings that include New Mexico and Colorado based on the manuscript of the late Donald E. Stewart and set in 1892.

Christian Bale (The Big Short) stars as Capt. Joseph Blocker, known for vicious handling of Native Americans, out to assist a courtly, yet nearly catatonic grief-stricken mother Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike of Gone Girl and A United Kingdom). Also, the chivalrous Blocker's reluctant to honor Pres. Harrison's command to return seven-year incarcerated Cheyenne chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his disciples to their Montana  Valley of the Bears homeland (he's well-versed in their dialect, you see).

Cooper's screenplay alternates between the reprehensibly primal and compassionate during an austere (one-thousand mile) trek where criminal Frank Willis (Ben Foster) as disturbing episodes will occur in varying territories with their distinctive beatific environs. Allowing Blocker to consider the harshness handed down to those who themselves can't be condoned for their similar tendencies. The natives aren't really given fair-minded characterization to present, but interpretatively there is the notion of the extent of intolerance when it comes to a deeper understanding.

Look for decent underlying turns from the likes of Jesse Plemons, Rory Cochrane, Adam Beach, Timothee Chalamet, and Q'orianka Kilcher (remembered from The New World). But, Bale gets to brood with a certain finally honorable virility (in civilian clothes) and a persuasive Pike at last out for a midwest metropolis in an admirable, if less stimulating low-budgeter from Cooper (Black Mass, Crazy Heart).