Dark side of the ‘Moon’: Scorsese, De Niro, DiCaprio make another crime-family movie


Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” is a bust. The first sign of trouble was in Scorsese’s publicity-tour revelation that he initially planned a movie about the FBI investigation starring Leonardo DiCaprio as agent Tom White in what the filmmakers decided would be little more than a “police procedural.” Evidently, “dubious marriage” sounded like a better idea.

“Flower Moon” is “The Departed” meets “There Will Be Blood” meets “Giant,” maybe with a dash of “Chinatown.” But it really plays like David Fincher’s “Se7en” as the audience, by the halfway point, will start to count down how many killings are still needed to accomplish the villain’s goal and what kind of cinematic flourish will be used to depict each one.

Financial crimes are like book-writing. Both plots are a tough sell for a feature film, but filmmakers keep making them anyway. “Killers of the Flower Moon” is based on the 2017 book by David Grann. The underlying motivation for the crimes should’ve given Scorsese serious pause about pursuing this project. We have people talking about insurance policies and perhaps even signing them, always a visual smorgasbord. What’s there to show? (Ah, dumb question. Scorsese read the book and realized, There’s killings, maimings, sawing up bodies!)

Scorsese, as he announces in the film’s intro, went to Oklahoma to shoot this movie. It’s hard to see how it otherwise would’ve been made. Construct a set in Toronto? Oklahoma is a beautiful state. Most of the scenes in “Flower Moon” take place in 1920s homes and offices and cars.

Consider this film’s cousin “Giant,” one of the greatest ever made. George Stevens mostly skipped the mansion and showed us the massive Texas horizon and the competing visions of old-economy cattle vs. new-economy oil. In beautiful contrast, sometimes the land in that film looks vibrant; other times, barren. Scorsese seems more interested that viewers see Leonardo DiCaprio’s fake teeth than the Osage landscape. The land in “Flower Moon” is irrelevant. That battle has already been won, according to the script, ironically by the Osage; all characters agree that the rights to the oil belong to the “full blood” Osage and only murder + complicated yearslong schemes can pry it from them. Well, maybe not — sometime before the cameras started rolling, several characters had to declare themselves “incompetent” in order to still receive the money that the government seems to agree is theirs. Confused? The director is simply trying to tell us, These people got screwed.

That’s a fine point and not the first time it’s been made — but the movie indicates that they’d probably be a lot better off if they didn’t keep marrying criminal buffoons despite expressing that they know, before the vows are taken, pretty much what they’re in for.


Do Ernest and Mollie really seem like they’re in love? The courtship of Mike and Apollonia in “The Godfather,” a small subplot that’s a subtle success of Francis Coppola, was far more convincing. Ernest is so dumb, it seems like he doesn’t know why he’s there, other than he passed some correspondence test about what kind of women he likes. Couple that with an I.Q. apparently low enough to agree to take part in this mayhem.

The FBI team — the original impetus for the film — is kept at an awkward arm’s length. Scorsese doesn’t want viewers cheering the feds’ Eliot Ness-like approach; he wants us to agonize with Ernest’s problem of selling out either his wife or his patron. At times, the FBI prosecution team almost seems like it might be pulling some of those tricks seen in the grilling in “Oppenheimer.” A pointless and frustrating twist occurs late when, in “Godfather: Part II”-like fashion, we have the witness and target conversing in jail on their options, and one person will change their mind, then change it again.

Also at arm’s length is colorism. The awkward manner in which “Flower Moon” dabbles at this subject is almost its own subplot. Several times, characters remark about someone’s skin color. It is in a few instances perhaps implied that those who appear white may gain advantages. This would seem to prompt more tension within the indigenous community than among the whites, who only care about the money. Through the end of the film, clear boundaries between whites and tribe members, no matter skin pigment, are established, and reinforced.

What about ethnic revelations — Scorsese’s specialty — of the white characters? In her adulatory review of 1973’s “Mean Streets,” Pauline Kael lauds Scorsese’s depictions of Italian street thugs; “all crime is not alike, and different ethnic groups have different styles of lawlessness.” In “Flower Moon,” a reference is made to being Catholic and not going to church. Beyond that, the bad guys seem staffed not from a single apartment building but a Hollywood casting lot. Kael writes of “Mean Streets,” “we’re so affected because we know in our bones that he has walked these streets and has felt what his characters feel.” What does Scorsese know about the Osage that he didn’t read in Grann’s book?

There are similarities but key differences in “Flower Moon” and “Mississippi Burning.” Each features a small town run by a syndicate of local thugs doing ghastly racial things at night. In “Burning,” the FBI agents will gradually win the confidence of a beleaguered wife and earn a breakthrough in their case. In “Moon,” the beleaguered wife has to call on the FBI to achieve a breakthrough.

Lily Gladstone has garnered considerable acclaim for her role as Mollie. Gladstone is uniquely beautiful and tragic as the worldly wise young woman who deserves a much better fate. But is this legitimately a lead role? Her mother delivers the strongest lines. The script, perhaps relying on too much authenticity, decides to stick Mollie in bed, sweating 24 hours a day, just as the plot needs to delve into some of its clumsy derivative hit-men angles that will prove necessary for another of Scorsese’s failings here, a reliance on courtroom theatrics, not at all unlike the last hour of “Oppenheimer.”

There’s a curious hint of decadence in “Flower Moon” among all ethnicities. Maybe intentional, maybe not. What do any of these people do? Sit around all day and wait for their government checks? These characters who might seem like today’s lower middle class have servants. Several times, people complain about workers who don’t actually work but seem enlisted to perform organized crime activities.

Scorsese came of age in the early ’70s, coincidentally when Native American issues reached a peak presence in pop culture (yes, the 1973 Oscars ceremony is the most famous moment). The strongest point by far that “Flower Moon” will make is that the American establishment viewed the indigenous as something less than human beings, a theme throughout history’s worst atrocities. Scorsese’s work insists the perceptive Mollie, not the FBI, is the hero, despite the fact she brought this monster into her family and appeared astonishingly oblivious to both the plots against her and her own medical regimen.

How do we know who really won? Scorsese tells us but with ambiguity, in the curious form of a radio show in which prison sentences and life spans are rattled off, a less-impressive ending than even that of the airplane text in “American Graffiti.”

The motion picture industry, barely more than a century old, arrived very early at a preferred run length: two hours. That could be for several reasons. Movies had to be long enough to justify making a trip to see them, and short enough to play multiple times in a day to keep filling seats. There’s maybe a stronger artistic reason — that perhaps the greatest satisfaction humans can receive from a motion picture occurs somewhere around a two-hour mark, that those significantly shorter aren’t giving enough of the good stuff, and those that are longer begin to wear us out. The latter has been tempted by directors from the beginning of movies. Now, they have key enablers. “Flower Moon” is the type of directorial excess that died around the time of “Heaven’s Gate” only to be resuscitated, in a big way, in the 2010s by the advent of tech giants’ streaming services that will pay any price and allow any length to land a name director who might come up big in awards season; in fact, this is the second such time for Scorsese in recent years.

“Moon” is popular among critics, but many aren’t completely convinced. Few seem to question why the world needs another crime-family movie from an 80-year-old director and the same two stars who have done this type of material for him for decades. The San Francisco Chronicle’s Mick LaSalle, easily one of the best in the business, actually claims that Scorsese “tried something new.” But that was only after LaSalle astutely called the movie a “tawdry crime story” and “lumbering mess,” an “ungainly and tonally odd film that, for all the strength of its parts, has little cumulative impact.”

“Flower Moon,” like “Wind River” and others, can’t get around the fact that no matter how much Scorsese included the Osage in the production nor how much time he spent in Oklahoma, this is a film made by white folks about a white monstrosity. “Mississippi Burning” didn’t have the same reticence toward law enforcement’s role in settling the issue. The drama of that film, as much a thriller as a solemn treatise, is the old-school cop Gene Hackman coming around to the quietly bureaucratic Willem Dafoe’s views on what’s right. There is humor in that film that does not exist, with a couple exceptions, in “Flower Moon,” which affirms a very important point but does not answer what these killings mean.


2 stars
(October 2023)

“Killers of the Flower Moon” (2023)
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart ♦ Robert De Niro as William Hale ♦ Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart ♦ Jesse Plemons as Tom White ♦ Tantoo Cardinal as Lizzie Q ♦ John Lithgow as Prosecutor Peter Leaward ♦ Brendan Fraser as W.S. Hamilton ♦ Cara Jade Myers as Anna ♦ JaNae Collins as Reta ♦ Jillian Dion as Minnie ♦ Jason Isbell as Bill Smith ♦ William Belleau as Henry Roan ♦ Louis Cancelmi as Kelsie Morrison ♦ Scott Shepherd as Byron Burkhart ♦ Everett Waller as Paul Red Eagle ♦ Talee Redcorn as Non-Hon-Zhin-Ga / Traditional Leader ♦ Yancey Red Corn as Chief Bonnicastle ♦ Tatanka Means as John Wren ♦ Tommy Schultz as Blackie Thompson ♦ Sturgill Simpson as Henry Grammer ♦ Ty Mitchell as John Ramsey ♦ Gary Basaraba as Detective Burns ♦ Charlie Musselwhite as Alvin Reynolds ♦ Pat Healy as Agent John Burger ♦ Steve Witting as Dr. James Shoun ♦ Steve Routman as Dr. David Shoun ♦ Gene Jones as Pitts Beaty ♦ Michael Abbott Jr. as Agent Frank Smith ♦ J.C. MacKenzie as Radio Announcer ♦ Jack White as Radio Show Actor ♦ Larry Sellers as Non-Hon-Zhin-Ga ♦ Barry Corbin as Undertaker Turton ♦ Gabe Casdorph as Joe Jones ♦ Samuel French as Agent CJ Robinson ♦ Wally Welch as Bob Mount ♦ James Roman Dailey Jr. as Baby Namer ♦ Christopher Cote as Baby Namer (for Anna) ♦ Randy Houser as Scott Mathis ♦ Moe Headrick as Sheriff Freas ♦ Pete Yorn as Acie Kirby ♦ Margaret Shannon-Sisk as Wife of Pipe Keeper / Wailing Relative ♦ Moira Redcorn as Prologue Wailer ♦ Eric Parkinson as Deputy Marshal ♦ Chase Parker as Osage at Oil Discovery / Fairfax Explosion Responder ♦ Jarad Looper as Osage at Oil Discover ♦ John Gibbs as Osage at Oil Discover ♦ Jerry Logsdon as Osage at Oil Discover ♦ Jacob Lux as Osage at Oil Discover ♦ Xavier Toehay as Osage at Oil Discover ♦ Mike Cook as Hawker at Train ♦ Katherine Willis as Myrtie Hale ♦ Delani Sue Chambers as Willie Hale ♦ Zachary Hokeah as Osage dying from poison ♦ Talon Satepauhoodle as John Whitehair ♦ Jennifer Lynn Rader as Sara Butler ♦ Chance Rush as Bill Stepson ♦ Dana Daylight as Anna Sanford ♦ Mahada Sanders as Rose Lewis ♦ Ben Hall as Sara’s Murderer ♦ John Q. Wilson as Bank Clerk ♦ Beau Smith as Photos Hustler #1 ♦ Victor McCay as Photos Hustler #2 ♦ Nathalie Standingcloud as Roan Girlfriend ♦ Jay Paulson as Car Salesman ♦ Marvin E. Stepson Jr. as Osage Family Buying Car ♦ Tracey Ann Moore as Osage Family Buying Car ♦ Easton Wade Yellowfish as Osage Family Buying Car ♦ Reignen Yellowfish as Osage Family Buying Car ♦ Candice Costello as Catherine Cole ♦ Father Chris Daigle as Catholic Priest ♦ Justin France as Card Player ♦ Jerry Wolf as Fred Denoya (robbed) ♦ Addie Roanhorse as Mrs. DeNoya (robbed) ♦ Erica Pretty Eagle Moore as Baby Naming Mother #1 / Bridesmaid ♦ Mason Cunningham as Baby Naming Father ♦ Norma Jean as Vera (Mollie’s Housekeeper) ♦ Elisha Pratt as Joseph Bigheart ♦ Desiree Storm Brave as Bertha Bigheart ♦ Margaret Gray as Grace Bigheart ♦ Christopher Hill as John Bigheart ♦ Dolan Wilson as Justice of the Peace ♦ Jackie Wyatt as Wedding Photographer ♦ Rayna Gellert as Wedding Band Lead Fiddle ♦ Nokosee Fields as Wedding Band ♦ Kieran Francis Kane as Wedding Band ♦ Lucas Ross as Wedding Band ♦ Elijah Cemp Ragsdale as Wedding Band ♦ Vanessa Pham as Elizabeth Burkhart (baby) ♦ Terry Allen as Uncle Jim ♦ Jo Harvey Allen as Aunt Annie ♦ Sarah Spurger as Martha (Nanny) ♦ Josh Close as Horace Burkhart ♦ Elden Henson as Duke Burkhart ♦ Kinsleigh Annette McNac as Elizabeth Burkhart (2-3 years) ♦ Roanin Davis as Cowboy Burkhart (baby) ♦ William David Fields as Bob The Cab Driver ♦ Anthony J. Harvey as Charlie Whitehorn ♦ Stephen Berkman as Studio Photographer ♦ William A. Hill as Studio Vagrant #1 ♦ Joseph Spinelli as Friendly Joe ♦ Blaine Hall as Studio Vagrant #2 ♦ Brent Langdon as Barney McBride ♦ Leland Prater as Rex Theater Manager ♦ DJ Whited as Cave Outlaw ♦ Elizabeth Waller as Elizabeth Burkhart (3-5 Years) ♦ Jessica Rosemary Harjo as Pearl (Henry’s Girlfriend) ♦ Joey Oglesby as Roy Bunch ♦ Alexis Ann as Mary Roan ♦ Lee Eddy as Mrs. Mackie ♦ Gary Steven Pratt as Bank Manager ♦ Nathaniel Arcand as Ancestor Warrior ♦ Kristin Keith as Speakeasy Prostitute ♦ Bravery Lane Nowlin as Cowboy (2-3 Years) ♦ Edward Gray Sr. as Fleeing Osage Family ♦ Angela Pratt as Fleeing Osage Family ♦ Henry Amos Gray as Fleeing Osage Family ♦ Samuel Gray as Fleeing Osage Family ♦ Edward Gray Jr. as Fleeing Osage Family ♦ Mamie Cozad as Baby Anna (at naming) ♦ Shonagh Smith as Nettie Brookshire ♦ Joel Tallchief Lemon as Fairfax Explosion Responder ♦ Richard Lookout RulingHisSun as Fairfax Explosion Responder ♦ Brett Bower as Fairfax Explosion Responder ♦ Garrison Panzer as Radio Announcer ♦ River Rhoades as Cowboy (4-5 Years) ♦ Zack T. Morris as Osage Delegation Member ♦ Harrison Shackelford as Osage Delegation Member ♦ Alexis Waller as Elizabeth Burkhart (5-6 years) ♦ Mark Landon Smith as President Coolidge ♦ Tom Ashmore as Tribal Council Interpreter ♦ Myron F. Red Eagle as Osage Man Town Dance ♦ Dolores Marie Goodeagle as Osage Woman Town Dance ♦ Matt Tolentino as Town Dance Band ♦ Johnny Baier as Town Dance Band ♦ Gregory Fallis as Town Dance Band ♦ Patrick Bubert as Town Dance Band ♦ TJ Muller as Town Dance Band ♦ William Reardon-Anderson as Town Dance Band ♦ Peter Reardon-Anderson as Town Dance Band ♦ Kyle Dillingham as Town Dance Band ♦ Jacob Johnson as Town Dance Band ♦ Jeffrey Stevenson as Town Dance Band ♦ Clint Rohr as Town Dance Band ♦ Reride Smith as Hale’s Ranch Hand ♦ James Healy Jr. as 2nd Insurance Man ♦ Jeremy Good Voice as Pony Watching Man ♦ Ron McMahan as Old Timer ♦ Seth Buckminster as Barber ♦ Penny Potts as Ballet Instructor ♦ Melissa Tiger as Pony Watching Woman ♦ Karen Garlitz as Tillie Stepson ♦ Bronson Redeagle as Tillie’s Son ♦ Jenny Paige Lynn as Tillie’s Daughter ♦ David Born as Kelsie’s Lawyer ♦ Mary Gen Buss as John Ramsey’s Wife ♦ Ted Welch as Reporter #1 ♦ Carl Palmer as Reporter #2 ♦ Tanner Brantley as Marshall Gunman ♦ Jezy Gray as Hale’s Secretary ♦ Steve Eastin as Judge John C. Pollock ♦ Joe Chrest as Lawyer Freeling ♦ Brian Shoop as Mr. Kraceon ♦ James Carroll as Mr. Solowey ♦ Lux Britni Malaske as Baby Anna (2 years) ♦ Adam Washington as Acolyte ♦ Larry Jack Dotson as Jailer ♦ Larry Fessenden as Radio Voice (for Hale) ♦ Welker White as Radio Voice (Hale’s Relative) ♦ Martin Scorsese as Radio Show Producer ♦ Marko Costanzo as Radio Sound Effects ♦ Nick White as Radio Sound Effects ♦ Rob Fisher as Radio Show Conductor ♦ Vince Giordano as Radio Show Band Leader ♦ Paul Woodiel as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Andy Stein as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Sam Bardfeld as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Joe Boga as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Jon-Erik Kellso as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Jim Fryer as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Marc Phaneuf as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Mark Lopeman as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Chris Byars as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Vinny Raniolo as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Paul Wells as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Peter Yarin as Radio Show Orchestra ♦ Scott George as End Celebration Osage Head Singer ♦ Kenneth Bighorse Jr. as End Celebration Osage Head Singer ♦ Vann Bighorse as End Celebration Osage Head Singer ♦ Anna L. Bighorse as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Mason Bighorse as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Norris Bighorse as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Scott Bighorse as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Paul Bemore as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Taveah Ann George as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Wahwastoas J. Jones as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Dobbin Monoessy Knifechief as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Julia Lookout as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Jennifer Moses as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Francis Pipestem Jr. as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Michael Paul Pahsetopah as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Silas Satepauhoodle as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Cherylyn Oberly Satepauhoodle as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Charisse Satepauhoodle as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Lynette Satepauhoodle as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ John Shaw as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Angela Toineeta as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Alexandria Toineeta as End Celebration Osage Singer ♦ Ed Yellowfish as End Celebration Osage Singer

Directed by: Martin Scorsese

Written by: Eric Roth (screenplay)
Written by: Martin Scorsese (screenplay)
Written by: David Grann (book)

Producer: Martin Scorsese
Producer: Dan Friedkin
Producer: Daniel Lupi
Producer: Bradley Thomas
Co-producer: Justine Conte
Executive producer: Leonardo DiCaprio
Executive producer: Rick Yorn
Executive producer: John Atwood
Executive producer: Adam Somner
Executive producer: Marianne Bower
Executive producer: Shea Kammer
Executive producer: Lisa Frechette
Executive producer: Niels Juul
Music: Robbie Robertson
Cinematography: Rodrigo Prieto
Editing: Thelma Schoonmaker
Casting: Rene Haynes, Ellen Lewis
Production design: Jack Fisk
Key supervising art director: Matthew Gatlin
Supervising art director: Meghan McClure
Supervising art director: Michael Diner
Art direction: Jordan Crockett, Spencer Davison, Marisa Frantz
Set decoration: Adam Willis
Costume design: Jacqueline West
Makeup and hair: Thomas Nellen, Elisa Acevedo, Tracey Anderson, Lanard Atkins, Charmaine Balcerzak, Zoey Belton, Gloria Belz, Heather Benson, Elizabeth Bey, makeup artist, Kathryn Blondell, Linda Boykin-Williams, Anita Brabec, Andrea Carreno, Jon Carter, Laura Casey, Roxy D'Alonzo, J.C. Davis, Andrea De Leon, Cynthia Dreier, Melinda Dunn, Jameson Eaton, Amanda Duffy Evans, Lindsay Garrison, Jimmy Goode, Renae Goodhew, Sian Grigg, Jason Hamer, Heather A. Hawkins, Stephen Imhoff, Jennifer Jane, Duncan Jarman, Sandy Jo Johnston, Linda Kaufman, Martina Kohl, Teresa Luz, Anna Majewski, John Maldonado, Toni Marlo, Lydia Milars, Jennifer Mullins, Ned Neidhardt, Luca Nemolato, Candace Orlandi, Richard Orton, Bobbie Payne, Beate Petruccelli, Jerry Popolis, Casey Pratt, Richard Redlefsen, Lia Robin, Kim Shriver, Kyle Skillin, Horace Stevenson III, Vincent Van Dyke, Brian Walsh, Carla White, Nacoma Whobrey, Anna Williams, Hiro Yada, Melissa Yonkey Production supervisor: Corey Sklov
Production supervisor: Jennifer Haire
Production supervisor: Daniel Castle King
Unit production manager: Shea Kammer
Unit production manager: Daniel Lupi
Unit production manager: Prep Only: Georgia Kacandes
Unit production manager: Kristyn Macready
Post-production supervisor: Kelley Cribben
Stunts: Richard Bucher, Stephen Pope, Peter Epstein, Pamela Banks, Thomas E. Bentley, Jon Bielich, Paul Michael Bloodgood, Richard Burden, Kc Coy, Cody Crank, Darrell Davis, Danny Edmo, Jared Frenke, Tommy Goodwin, Justin Hall, Regis Harrington, Jim Henry, Ashley Nicole Hudson, Ashleigh Lewis, Chad Knorr, Josh Lakatos, Brandy Lewis, Aaron Matthews, Randy P Melton, Christopher Parker, Justin Parks, Krista Perry, James Peyton, Blake Pocquette, Alexa Rae, Kent Shelton, Ryker Sixkiller, D. Reride Smith, Matt Thompson, Dawson Towery, Josh Vinyard
Special thanks: Michael Aloyan
Thanks: Maria Gus


E-mail: mail@widescreenings.com


Back to widescreenings.com