Martin Scorsese is one of the greatest filmmakers to have ever lived. The man is 80 years old and still directing a feature film which is 4 hour long. The man known for his crime movies also excels in other genres. In fact he has made some of the best drama movies of the past generation. His new film which debuted in Cannes this year received a 9 minute standing ovation. The premise of Killers of the Flower Moon, “In the 1920s, members of the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County, Oklahoma, are murdered after oil is found on their land, and the FBI decides to investigate.” The critics who witnessed this spectacle have shared their thoughts with us. Let’s see whether the film lives up to the hype or not.
Killers of the Flower Moon Reviews Round-Up: Worth the 9-minutes Standing Ovation?
Peter Bradshaw (Guardian) – “This is an utterly absorbing film, a story that Scorsese sees as a secret history of American power, a hidden violence epidemic polluting the water table of humanity.” Original Score: 5/5
Peter Debruge (Variety) – “In its present form, “Killers” is still a compelling true story… It’s engrossing from the get-go, the palpable tension methodically echoed by Robbie Robertson’s steady-heartbeat score. But it keeps going and going.”
David Ehrlich (indieWire) – “The best performance of Leonardo DiCaprio’s entire career… His nuanced and uncompromising turn as the cretinous Ernest Burkhart mines new wonders from the actor’s long-standing lack of vanity.” Original Score: B+
Stephen Garrett (Observer) –“The film’s most radical departure from Grann’s true-crime tale is to turn it from a murder-mystery procedural to a pitch-black romance.”
Esther Zuckerman (The Daily Beast) – “It’s anchored by performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert de Niro that both rank among their best, but the soul of the movie belongs to Lily Gladstone, who broke out in 2016’s Certain Women.”
Peter Howell (Toronto Star) – “Sprawling across the screen for 206 minutes, “Killers” tests our patience but more than earns its keep as a prestige film sure to figure prominently in the next Oscar race.” Original Score: 3.5/4
Donald Clarke (Irish Times) – “Clocking in at close to 3½ hours, Killers of the Flower Moon rates high in the 21st-century Scorsese canon, but it asks its viewers for substantial patience.” Original Score: 4/5
Robert Daniels (The Playlist) – “As are the performances. Seeing DiCaprio and DeNiro match wits allows the film to remain in a liminal space where the characters’ intentions are clear yet unconfirmed. But it’s Gladstone who is the clear highlight.” Original Score: B
Clarisse Loughrey {Independent (UK)} – “It’s Gladstone who provides the film’s centre of gravity. She gives one of the most extraordinary performances by a woman in any of Scorsese’s movies. She is serene but not saintly; a figure of tragedy with a fire in her belly.” Original Score: 5/5
Christina Newland (iNews.co.uk) – “This is a film of decay and dispassionate violence, a sprawling network of complacency and rot with a rotating cast of supporting characters and some surprising cameos along the way.”
David Jenkins (Little White Lies) – “Perhaps a very good, uneven film rather than an unequivocally great one.”
Bilge Ebiri (New York Magazine/Vulture) – “It feels like an open wound right up to the end.”
Robbie Collin {Daily Telegraph (UK)} – “A fascinating companion piece to The Irishman: another soaringly ambitious, balefully riveting act of American national-historical vivisection, carried out within the framework of one of the signature American genres.” Original Score: 5/5
Kevin Maher {Times (UK)} – “The script, from Forrest Gump’s Eric Roth, begins to meander badly, dropping in and out of the murder narrative and ultimately saddling us with a villain in De Niro who’s not nearly villainous enough and a protagonist in DiCaprio who’s a borderline moron.” Original Score: 2/5
Richard Lawson (Vanity Fair) – “Those heading to a Martin Scorsese movie looking for the electric verve of so many of his past films may initially be disappointed. But as Killers of the Flower Moon seeps in, it shocks, resounds, and haunts.”
David Sims (The Atlantic) – “De Niro is magnificently unsettling in the film — it might be the best work he’s done with Scorsese since Goodfellas — but the emotional powerhouses are DiCaprio and Gladstone.”
Justin Chang (Los Angeles Times) – “The triple-threat combo of Scorsese, DiCaprio and De Niro, obviously the movie’s main selling point, also comes to feel like its central distraction. Gladstone’s performance… goes a long way toward [keeping] this dynamic in check.”
Charlotte O’Sullivan (London Evening Standard – “Killers of the Flower Moon suggests film-makers should keep on keeping on. I’d even put my cowboy boot on the line and declare this one of the best Westerns ever made and almost certainly the best film of 2023 so far.” Original Score: 5/5
Fionnuala Halligan (Screen International) – “Killers Of The Flower Moon is to be savoured as elevated cinema, each frame a picture moving towards a goal. Not just in the more bravura camera sweeps, but the very construction of even the most — deceptively — simply-staged scenes.”
Tomris Laffly (TheWrap) – “Killers of the Flower Moon is vast and vital in its scale, purpose and emotional scope, a Western-thriller and ensemble piece that is every bit a Scorsese crime picture as one can dare to imagine.”
David Rooney (Hollywood Reporter) – “The three-and-a-half-hour running time is fully justified in an escalating tragedy that never loosens its grip — a sordid illustration of historical erasure with echoes in today’s bitterly divisive political gamesmanship.”
David Fear (Rolling Stone) – “[A picture] brimming with reverence for a culture that survived a horrible trauma as it is filled with exhilarating flourishes, film history references, and explorations of the faultline between the sacred and profane. And yes: It’s a masterpiece.”
Raphael Abraham (Financial Times) –“Gladstone is the film’s quiet centre, often inscrutable yet exuding a subtle power while the white men chatter away endlessly in this dialogue-heavy movie — “blackbird talk” as the Osage call it.” Original Score: 4/5
Killers of the Flower Moon is slated to release on 6th October 2023.
If you have any questions regarding the Killers of the Flower Moon, feel free to ask in the comments below. For more content, stay tuned. As usual, like, subscribe and share our articles as we here are trying to build a community of people High on Cinema!
