‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’ Early Reviews Talk Length

Martin Scorsese He may not be a fan of comic book movies, but for a certain sect of moviegoers, his movies are events on a par with Marvel’s latest entry. The latest from the master filmmaker, Moonflower Killers, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday, to early reviews falling short soon after. From the looks of it, the legend behind giants like Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Goodfellasand The wolf of Wall Street he’s made a masterful, if arguably flawed (or maybe just ambitious in a way that’s daunting on first viewing) epic.

Let’s first eliminate what will probably be the most common complaint among moviegoers: its length. Scorsese has been making colossal works since 1977. New York, New Yorkand assassins —about the “Reign of Terror,” aka the massacre of an oil-rich Osage community in the 1920s—is his second longest (after his previous fictional film, the Irishof course).

Varietyby Peter Debruge Concerns that it will hurt its cinematic chances, although funded by Apple, it will hit theaters before its broadcast, in October, also believes that it hurts the film in general:

That’s why someone has to stand up and tell Marty to control it. They should have done it before he started filming, as the pacing is built in and Scorsese’s projects don’t compress well after the fact. In its current form, “Killers” remains a compelling true story, one that Scorsese and co-writer Rick Yorn turned from a standard white savior detective tale to a more morally thorny look at how white culprits plotted and carried out the crime. crime. murders. Stylistically, this feels like a young men’s movie. It’s gripping from the start, the palpable tension methodically reflected by Robbie Robertson’s score. But it goes on and on until everyone we care about is dead, dying, or behind bars, with almost an hour still in the store.

Deadlineby Pete Hammondon the other hand, he had no problems with the length:

There are so many ways to spoil the sheer pleasure of watching a master filmmaker handle a great story like this, working on top of a very impressive game at a time when so many have retired. I won’t do that except to say that at 3 1/2 hours long, the filmmaker and his longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker don’t seem to be wasting any time. Yes, it feels truly epic in many ways, but it’s all in the service of the story. I never looked at my watch.

Idem the hollywood reporterit’s david rooney:

But the three and a half hour running time is fully justified in a mounting tragedy that never loosens its grip: a sordid illustration of historical erasure with echoes in today’s bitterly divisive political game.

indiewireby David Ehrlichwho gave it a B+, praises the film but also points out what he sees as its flaws:

And yet the “Reign of Terror,” which ensued in the wake of an oil discovery that made members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma the richest people per capita on planet Earth, proves to be a backdrop. uncomfortably vast for Scorsese’s more intimate brand. from the crime saga. The book from which “Killers of the Flower Moon” has been adapted is a sweeping tale of the end of the Wild West and the dawn of the 20th century, as author David Grann spends roughly as much time on the modern-day sociopath who orchestrated the Osage. murders and the old-fashioned cowboy J. Edgar Hoover sent to stop him. Scorsese’s more limited version takes stock of those tectonic shifts in our nation’s history, but only in passing. His primary interest is limited to his sinister mastermind and favorite lapdog, two doe-eyed bastards whose understanding of the new American landscape was limited to the belief that it still belonged to them.

Rolling Stone‘s David Fear calls it an M word:

Structured as the kind of retrospective epic that characterized the ambitious filmmaking of the 1970s and early 1980s, Killers of the Flower Moon is, at its core, a love story. But it’s also a mystery, though not one with simplistic solutions; a very gothic version of the white hat horse operas of yesteryear; an all-star vehicle, featuring the best performance of a career from an actor whose talent is often overshadowed by his celebrity; a continuation of a 50-year sui generis collaboration between two artists/couple from Little Italy; and an indictment of white supremacy, then and now. Above all, it is a Martin Scorsese film, brimming with reverence for a culture that survived horrific trauma, filled with thought-provoking flourishes, references to film history, and explorations of the gap between the sacred and the profane. And yes: it is a masterpiece.

The Guardianby Peter Bradshaw connects to Scorsese’s earlier work, which often deals with the sociopathy of the wealthy and powerful:

With co-writer Eric Roth, Scorsese creates an epic of progressive existential horror about the birth of the American century, a macabre tale of near-genocidal serial murder mimicking the great removal of Native Americans from the US. drama plane a marriage illuminated by gas of lies and poisoned love. It echoes Scorsese’s earlier work on mob violence, mob loyalty, and the inevitable eventual surrender to federal authorities, whose own bad faith gradually emerges. But in the end, this movie is about what all Westerns, and perhaps all of history, are about: the brutal grabbing of land, resources, and power.

it does too los angeles timesJustin Changwho also states that she can’t wait to see him again so she can better fight with her ambitions.

In the background of all the dense, jam-packed action, you might hear reverberating echoes of “Goodfellas” and “The Irishman,” “Gangs of New York” and “The Wolf of Wall Street,” among other indelible American epics of organized crime. and tribalist. violence. But you will also hear—in the dying screams and silences of an Osage woman named Mollie Burkhart (a superb Lily Gladstone), Ernest’s wife—a story of this nation’s original sin, compounded here to a degree of monstrosity and horror that can be give even a chronicler of human wickedness as seasoned as Scorsese’s pause.

For the rest of you, you’ll have to wait until October 6th to make up your mind.