‘Hostiles’ a tense, brutal Western
Once feared dead but found instead to be only sleeping, the Western has sprung back to life, and the intense, involving “Hostiles” is the latest case in point. Written and directed by Scott Cooper and powered by interwoven performances from Christian Bale, Wes Studi and Rosamund Pike, “Hostiles” grabs you by the throat and keeps holding on.
Like last year’s examples of the genre (think “WindRiver”), “Hostiles” concentrates on character psychology and dramatic tension, creating a force field of emotion from start to finish. While the protagonists and what they go through can sound familiar, Cooper has made sure that what we see surprises us, in terms of plot, characters are and how they act.
A tale of physical, emotional and even moral survival, “Hostiles” shows us people pushed to their limits and then some. More than that, each of the film’s central figures has reason to feel his or her life is as good as over.
Cooper, a former actor, directed Jeff Bridges to an Academy Award in “CrazyHeart.” As a filmmaker, his matter- of-fact approach works especially well with incendiary material.
Western fans know that “hostiles” is the term the U. S. Cavalry used when when referring to armed and dangerous Native American opponents. In this film, however, it also refers to two implacable enemies — Joseph Blocker (Bale), a captain in the U.S. Cavalry, and Yellow Hawk (Studi), a Northern Cheyenne war chief who has been an Army prisoner for seven years.
Their mutual hostility is based not on philosophical differences but concrete actions both men have taken and that neither regrets in the least. That is not the end of “Hostiles,” however, just the beginning.
Before we meet either man, the film opens in 1892 with a shattering catastrophe overtaking the frontier wife and mother Rosalee Quaid (Pike) at the hands of a band of the Comanche.
We first see Capt. Blocker listlessly overseeing a sadistic roundup of the last of the remaining Apache opposition outside his post at Fort Berringer, New Mexico. The hard-bitten soldier seems to have been hollowed out by years of violence.
About to retire, Blocker, who over the years has learned Yellow Hawk’s Northern Cheyenne dialect, is given one last assignment, very much against his will. The chief is dying of cancer, and the president— in what is as much a public-relations gesture as anything — is allowing him and his family, including his son Black Hawk (Adam Beach), to return to their ancestral lands in Montana. The captain is to lead the escort party.
Impeccably played by Studi, YellowHawk is no misunderstood pacifist. Though ill and past his prime, he has no second thoughts about defending his land and his people by any means necessary.
It’s a given that Blocker and his soldiers (including a cameo by Timothée Chalamet) will run into the traumatized, nearly catatonic Rosalee Quaid and take her along, but not much else about the film’s intricate plot is predictable.
As in Cooper’s previous films, the acting— including that of PeterMullan as a lieutenant colonel, and Ben Foster as a sergeant — is excellent. The device of having key dialogue between Blocker and Yellow Hawk take place in subtitled Northern Cheyenne adds resonance.
Its period and plotline mandate that the nature and consequences of prolonged violence is one of “Hostiles’ ” strongest themes. The key question it poses is not one of responsibility, however (“We’re all guilty of something,” one character says), but whether we have to continue to be prisoners of our past actions.