Hostiles

Directed by Scott Cooper (2017) ***1/2

Actor turned director Scott Cooper’s films have always had a literary bent (his favorite authors: Thomas Wolfe and William Faulkner). His previous film, Black Mass, about ’70s mob boss James (Whitey) Bulger, had interesting subject matter to spare, but the screenplay and directing seemed morose and perfunctory. Hostiles, while no laugh fest, has the artistry Black Mass lacked. It recalls the work and themes of John Ford’s westerns, without copying them; Hostiles is its own story, told in a modern way.

Christian Bale plays Captain Joseph Blocker, a soldier both taciturn and boiling with hate and resentment toward American Indians responsible for atrocities against his fellow soldiers (atrocities leading him to be just as violent in return). When called to the office of his Colonel, he’s commanded to safely deliver a Cheyenne war chief, Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), and his family back to their lands in Montana. Yellow Hawk is dying and the directive, complete with newspaper coverage, has come direct from the President of the United States. Blocker at first rebels against the command; his relationship with Yellow Hawk is long and tumultuous. Faced, though, with a court martial and a loss of his pension, he agrees to make the journey from Fort Berringer, New Mexico to Montana. He brings with them a young Private (Timothée Chalamet), a West Point Lieutenant (the ubiquitous Jesse Plemons), and a Buffalo Soldier, Corporal Henry Woodson (Jonathan Majors).

It isn’t long before they come across an emotionally distraught Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike) and the dead bodies of her husband and children amidst a burned log cabin, attacked by a Comanche war party. Blocker helps her bury her family and gives her safe passage, despite her fear of the Cheyenne family he’s escorting. The emotional complexities and raw anger aren’t tip-toed over in these scenes. Quaid’s anguish is hard to watch for both the other characters and the film’s audience. One feels we’re peeking into grief we shouldn’t be a witness to.

Hostiles is the story of a man who changes and the story of how and why he changes: through forced circumstance. The party he’s leading are literally sitting targets in the wilderness for the Comanche war party to pick off. Blocker eventually has to relent and allow the Cheyenne family to be unchained and help ward off danger; the Comanches will kill Cheyenne and U.S. soldier alike, and Blocker needs all the help
he can get.

Filmed on location in New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona, Hostiles uses the kind of wide-screen vistas Ford favored to show how isolated and vulnerable the travelers are, against the elements and potential attackers. It’s beautiful and powerful film making, especially when the expansive is alternated with the intimate; such is Christian Bale’s dedication to craft that the slightest, facial expression and tick tells and advances the story as a whole and his story.

Though two hours and fifteen minutes, Hostiles tells a lean, linear story, so spoilers aren’t in order here. The theme and plot are helped by events along the journey. When stopping in Colorado, Blocker is assigned to take Sgt. Charles Wills (Ben Foster, Hell or High Water) to be court martialed and hanged for atrocities. An old comrade of Blocker’s, Wills is guilty of doing no less than what Blocker did during active war time. This irony brings extra conflict to the already stressed traveling party.

Hostiles‘ ending, an overt gesture to John Wayne in Ford’s The Searchers, at first seemed to me an attempt to send the audience out on a happier note. It is, in retrospect, true to the evolution of Blocker’s character who, in his world of hurt, deserves human bonds so long denied him. Cooper’s western is both relevant and timeless, modern and classic. It was, unfortunately not well promoted by its studio, Entertainment Studios, and came and went from theaters quickly.

—Michael R. Neno, 2024 February 4