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Hostiles
A legendary army captain forced to escort his arch enemy to his sacred burial ground as a PR stunt by politicians comes to terms with his demons.
Scott Cooper fell into my radar during the abysmal box office performance of out of the furnace. Its one of the two Christian bale movies that came out in the fall of 2013. While American Hustle took off this movie was DOA at box office and also critically.He is an actor turned director who is trying to create a directorial style that particular to him.He definitely has something to say as a director and that comes through in his movies.He is not one of those directors like peter berg or Gavin O'Connor or Antoine Fuqua who make movies that feel like a cookie cutter studio movies but very well made. Scott Cooper has a style and vision that is unique. But the only problem is that his vision and skills are not experienced enough and honed enough to be making movies that star some of the very top movie stars in the world.
Hostiles deal with highly ambitious concepts of "respect the others" and "learned hatred" and "origin of trauma of soldiers" because these could have easily failed. There is no point in praising the physical violence in the movie because its done very often. But some of the scenes depicts emotional trauma like never before. There is some risk taking there. Aggregate review on rotten tomatoes points out the unevenness of the movie and movie is uneven not just in terms of story but pace, emotional punch and descent into misery. Some scenes are very powerful where as some scenes feel amateurish in emotional depth.
One of the tricks done by master filmmakers in dealing with political subject matters is to go about it indirectly.Same concept as in this movie is dealt in a round about way in the Revenant. The main story is of revenge but in doing so they touch upon topics of treating nature and natives with hostility. Even Unforgiven starts as a revenge and it slowly descents into the core of westerns.When you have movies with the sole concept of hate, the director has to be very careful how they make the movie without being too obvious. Due to that I feel that the director has to be more experienced than him to make a movie that is so tricky.
The dissection of story gives us lot of threads. The reflection of different people christian bale could be is seen in rory cochrene and ben foster as all 3 men love doing what they do.The origin of divided america. The effects on soldiers for following the orders and doing their job.But the problem is , the director is not talented enough to make them feel natural and instead they all stick out way too on the nose.
So all in all this movie doesn't deserve the treatment it got during awards season with seemingly no major studio willing to give Oscar campaign and release for this movie and all the awards organisations shunning it.Luckily they were saved by entertainment studios to give Oscar push which didn't pan out in terms of acclaim.But the release schedule did help it financially.
A legendary army captain forced to escort his arch enemy to his sacred burial ground as a PR stunt by politicians comes to terms with his demons.
Scott Cooper fell into my radar during the abysmal box office performance of out of the furnace. Its one of the two Christian bale movies that came out in the fall of 2013. While American Hustle took off this movie was DOA at box office and also critically.He is an actor turned director who is trying to create a directorial style that particular to him.He definitely has something to say as a director and that comes through in his movies.He is not one of those directors like peter berg or Gavin O'Connor or Antoine Fuqua who make movies that feel like a cookie cutter studio movies but very well made. Scott Cooper has a style and vision that is unique. But the only problem is that his vision and skills are not experienced enough and honed enough to be making movies that star some of the very top movie stars in the world.
Hostiles deal with highly ambitious concepts of "respect the others" and "learned hatred" and "origin of trauma of soldiers" because these could have easily failed. There is no point in praising the physical violence in the movie because its done very often. But some of the scenes depicts emotional trauma like never before. There is some risk taking there. Aggregate review on rotten tomatoes points out the unevenness of the movie and movie is uneven not just in terms of story but pace, emotional punch and descent into misery. Some scenes are very powerful where as some scenes feel amateurish in emotional depth.
One of the tricks done by master filmmakers in dealing with political subject matters is to go about it indirectly.Same concept as in this movie is dealt in a round about way in the Revenant. The main story is of revenge but in doing so they touch upon topics of treating nature and natives with hostility. Even Unforgiven starts as a revenge and it slowly descents into the core of westerns.When you have movies with the sole concept of hate, the director has to be very careful how they make the movie without being too obvious. Due to that I feel that the director has to be more experienced than him to make a movie that is so tricky.
The dissection of story gives us lot of threads. The reflection of different people christian bale could be is seen in rory cochrene and ben foster as all 3 men love doing what they do.The origin of divided america. The effects on soldiers for following the orders and doing their job.But the problem is , the director is not talented enough to make them feel natural and instead they all stick out way too on the nose.
So all in all this movie doesn't deserve the treatment it got during awards season with seemingly no major studio willing to give Oscar campaign and release for this movie and all the awards organisations shunning it.Luckily they were saved by entertainment studios to give Oscar push which didn't pan out in terms of acclaim.But the release schedule did help it financially.