HOSTILE TERRITORY
Bale confronts perils as Army captain transporting Comanche chief
Iliked “Hostiles” a lot more when it was called “The Outlaw Josey Wales” and was directed by and starred a 40-something Clint Eastwood. Directed by and adapted to the screen by Scott Cooper (“Black Mass”) from a manuscript by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Donald E. Stewart (“Missing”), “Hostiles” is set in the American West of 1892. The bloody Indian Wars are winding down. Capt. Joe Blocker (Christian Bale) has led his Union soldiers into battle repeatedly and witnessed and committed atrocities. He's ready to retire and live off his pension while he can enjoy life.
But his commanding officer (Stephen Lang) gives a reluctant Blocker one last order: Transport the dying Comanche chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family — son Black Hawk (Adam Beach), his wife, Elk Woman (Q'orianka Kilcher), Yellow Hawk's daughter (Tanaya Beatty) and his grandson — to his ancestral hunting grounds in Montana.
In Blocker's unit are Buffalo Soldier Cpl. Henry Woodson (a very good Jonathan Majors), a French-Canadian cook (breakout star Timothee Chalamet, “Call Me By Your Name”) and war-weary Sgt. Tommy Metz (Rory Cochrane). On their way, Blocker and his party find a remote farm that has been burned and looted, and Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), a woman in shock, the sole survivor of an attack by Apache bandits that left the rest of her family dead.
With the Apache bandits still at large and just-as-savage white fur traders lurking about, this ragtag band of Americans makes its way beneath abstract expressionist skies and past majestic mountains.
At first Blocker wants no part of Yellow Hawk or his family. But circumstances force them together in ways that are much too obvious and not altogether convincing. They establish a separate peace and find common ground, not the least of which is staying alive.
These scenes may remind some of similar ones in “Josey Wales,” featuring Eastwood and the old Indian chief played by the great Chief Dan George. On his journey, Blocker also agrees to transport a soldier convicted of mass murder, played by Ben Foster, who claims to be no different than Blocker. Can you say, “Don't you have enough to worry about?”
Cooper, who also directed “Crazy Heart” with Jeff Bridges and the baffling crime drama “Out of the Furnace,” makes his first Western, and he handles the, ahem, trappings of the genre well. The visuals of Cooper regular Masanobu Takayanagi are another of the film's saving graces.
But the screenplay, which features one of those “I'll just go wash these dishes in the river” bits, is weak and cliched. Bale, however, does his best with the material, as does Pike, and they both do estimable work. Jesse Plemons is also good as a West Point graduate on the range. Oklahoma-born Studi was so unforgettable in “Dances with Wolves” (1990) and “The Last of the Mohicans” (1992) and in so many other films and TV series, he should star in his own superhero movie.