Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
4.5/5
Up to today, I had Oppenheimer pinned as my favourite film of 2023. Now there’s a new challenger: the new Marten Scorsese flick Killers of the Flower Moon.
Thanks to this film’s gorgeous cinematography, spot-on direction and powerhouse performances from Leonardo DiCaprio and newbie Lily Gladstone, this film is one of 2023’s best and a surefire contender for this year’s Academy Awards.
Based off of David Grann’s 2017 book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI, the film follows Ernest Burkhart, a World War I veteran who comes to his uncle’s farm in Oklahoma looking for work.
After securing a job, Burkhart meets and falls in love with Mollie Kyle, whose family has a lot of rights to oil on the land. Soon afterwards, members of Kyle’s family and numerous other members of the Osage community start turning up murdered. The movie focuses on the ensuing federal investigation, which was the beginnings of the FBI.
I know this isn’t surprising to anybody because it’s Scorsese, but his direction here is spectacular. This is not his best film but it’s in my top five favourite Scorsese movies. By directing his actors perfectly and doing some very interesting things with the camera, Scorsese proves once again that he’s one of cinema’s finest filmmakers and delivers another great title to add to his filmography.
Another amazing aspect of this film is the acting. Everyone is amazing in it, but the standouts are DiCaprio and Gladstone. DiCaprio delivers one of his finest performances as Ernest Burkhart, the naive war hero who’s easily manipulated by his powerful uncle to commit some of these murders so he can inherit some of these oil rights to make his uncle and himself very rich. Despite being easily tricked, DiCaprio conveys Burkhart’s vulnerability so convincingly we actually root for him. That’s no easy feat.
Another knock-out performance is Gladstone, who plays Mollie Kyle. This character is probably the hardest to pull off, because they’re always sad. Sad is hard enough for an actor to convey, but to do it consistently throughout a three-and-a-half-hour runtime takes a really hardcore actor—Gladstone pulls it off brilliantly.
Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography is stunning and is worthy of Oscar attention, as is the work of three-time Oscar-winning film editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who cements herself here as one of the finest editors the medium has ever had. Her work adds enough pace to make a three-and-a-half-hour movie feel two and a half hours.
Killers of the Flower Moon is another hit Scorsese film; it’s well worth sitting through the runtime as it’s filled to the brim with spectacular performances and amazing editing.