Review: Hostiles

Hostiles (15)

USA 2017 133 mins  Dir: Scott Cooper  Cast: Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike, Wes Studi, Rory Cochrane, Jonathan Majors, Ben Foster

Remember the good old days of the black and white (in all senses of the term) western, when cowboys were good and injuns were bad? A more enlightened era brought the guilt-driven revisionist western, lamenting the slaughter of noble Native Americans and theft of their land by dastardly, avaricious, spiritually barren whitey? So what do you get when you attempt to introduce a note of realism by combining the two, acknowledging that not all indigenous peoples are saintly proto-hippies, and suggesting that even the most racist soldier can be redeemed? Well, if this independently financed film is any guide, the answer is an awful PC pickle that ties itself into well-meaning knots but winds up perpetrating the same old cliches. Worse, it’s really, really ponderous and self-important, with occasional moments of grisly action punctuated by long, solemn discussions ticking off a checklist of ishoos.

It starts thrillingly enough with a pre-credits sequence in which Rosalee Quaid (Pike) is teaching her adorable moppets the function of adverbs – what could better equip them for survival on the frontier? – in their idyllic homestead, whereupon a Comanche raiding party comes charging over the hill. Her hubby instructs his family to flee while he holds them off, but doesn’t last long until he’s shot dead and scalped. The children are all swiftly slaughtered, including Rosalee’s babe in arms, and she only escapes by the skin of her teeth. Boy, has she got a reason to hate the Native Americans. But her hatred is as nothing compared to that of bilious cavalry officer Captain Joseph Blocker (a glowering, taciturn Christian Bale sporting method whiskers), who considers them all to be “wretched savages” and has plenty of blood-curdling tales of brutality to support his view. On the verge of retirement, he’s been given one last important assignment: to take ailing Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Studi, making the most of his mandatory casting in such roles) and his family on a long trek to his Montana homeland, where the old boy can die on his ancient tribal land.

This rather begs the question: if successful completion of the mission is so important to the government, why put an avowed racist in charge of it? But writer/director Scott Cooper’s film is less concerned with logic than it is with engineering a series of situations in which the party come to recognise their common humanity. So before long, they pick up traumatised, hysterical Rosalee. Blocker is also equipped with a beardy old chum and former Reb (Cochrane), on whom the guilt of all his atrocities weighs heavily. Oh, and a black soldier (Majors) whose sole function is to underline the fact that Blocker is selective about which dark-skinned people he despises. As if that wasn’t enough, they also collect crazed convicted murderer Charles Wills (Foster). A fellow veteran of Wounded Knee, he clearly represents what could have happened to Blocker if his life had taken a different turn. Just in case we don’t geddit, Wills spells it out for us.

The Native Americans fare even worse. After initially clapping them all in irons, Blocker comes to recognise that Yellow Hawk is an analog of the ‘magical negro’ that black filmmakers have rightly ridiculed: the ‘good Indian’ who is prepared to put his wisdom and considerable skills at the service of the white man, being little more than a cypher himself. He also gets to articulate the view that their common enemy the Comanche are evil “rattlesnake people”. That’s right: the nuance here is to divide the ‘redskins’ into two, demonising an entire tribe as two-dimensional villains. Hostiles is so honourable in its approach that it’s hard to believe the intention was to reheat the same old stereotypes. At the same time, it’s mystifying that no one involved seems to have objected: “Hang on a minute – isn’t this all slightly dodgy?”