The very first scene of Scott Cooper’s (Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace) under the radar Hostiles lets you know one thing right off the bat. We get a good 10-minute scene of a four-person group of Comanche warriors comes rolling out of nowhere, attacks a family of five in the brutalist of fashions before burning down the ranch and taking off with their horses. After this scene, we get the title Hostiles pop up on the screen, and we know quickly we are in for something different than Will Smith’s Wild Wild West. This movie is not for the weak at heart. If you do not like tragedy, this film is not for you. If you have the stomach for, sometimes, senseless killing, characters who carry anger so deep that it burns their souls, and guilt so heavy that it tears lives apart, then this movie could be for you. If you crave a good old-fashioned western, then this movie surely will suffice. And if you want to see A-listers like Christian Bale (The Fighter, The Dark Knight Rises), Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, A United Kingdom), Jesse Plemons (The Post, Other People), Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name, Lady Bird) and Ben Foster (Hell or High Water, Lone Survivor) continue to cement their names in Hollywood then you can’t go wrong with Hostiles, easily one of the five best movies of 2017. Though it’s unlikely to dethrone Wind River for me, it’s doing its best to make a case in the 11th hour.
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