Killers of the Flower Moon is based on a book, and might very well be one of the most faithful book to screen adaptations ever. I have not read the book, I am just saying that it feels like reading a true crime novel. You know how non-fiction books, instead of illustrations throughout, will sometimes have a section in the middle with a punch of photos, and if it's something nearly 100 years ago, it's just going to be a bunch of black and white portraits and group shots that don't flatter the subjects much? There is actually a montage of such photos right in the (early) middle of the film. It's also very, very long, with lots of extraneous details you'd think someone would have edited a bit in the interest of a tighter story, but this is like Dave Filoni wrote it. Except Filoni with Ahsoka was clearly trying to fill time, and this movie is over three hours long.

At the beginning, they had that thing filmmakers and stars do sometimes, where they address the camera and thank the audience for coming. I appreciate the gesture, but on the other hand, we're already there, we have just for 20 minutes of commercials and trailers beyond the listed start time, and we want the movie, not another digression. Tom Cruise did it with his last two films, Top Gun 2 and Mission: Impossible 7. And this one has Martin Scorsese doing it, but the line that stuck with me was his assertion that the movie was very important to him. So I suspect that is the reason for the length - it's bloat that no one is going to tell Martin Scorsese he needs to cut. A lot of it seems to be tricks to appeal to critics and film buffs, like at one point showing silent movie footage with the old cards to fill in background information. At the end, the part where most movies catch you up on everyone's fate, rather than a few stills and a text crawl or voiceover by one of the characters, instead, we get to watch the performance of a 1950s style true crime radio show, with actors standing up to a mike in front of an orchestra and reading lines about the fates of the surviving main characters, and showing the sound effects guys, and one of the voice-actors/line-readers is even Scorsese himself. Isn't that so unique and cool? What's that you say, there is a reason that form of entertainment no longer happens?

I expected, going in, that this was a story of discrimination against the Indians that has been overlooked for a long time. When it comes to Indians, I am generally more sympathetic to many of their grievances than most other groups, but on the other hand a lot of their problems basically boil down to the fact that they lost a war. Every country is where it is, every people lives where they do, because way back when, someone lost a war. Indians are not unique, and there is nothing particularly malicious or different about their treatment than would have happened to white people doing the exact same thing. I also have exactly zero patience for Hollywood's fetishization of Indian culture and religion or implicating to them some sort of superior insight or perspective. It has exactly as much credibility and deserving of as much respect as Scientology or Islam as far as I am concerned (which I do not mean at all pejoratively), except the latter motivated people to DO something, instead of rusticate at a Stone Age tech level and facilitate their marginalization.

Now that being said, I knew coming into the movie that the Osage Indians had land in Oklahoma on which oil was found in the early 20th century and made (some of) them rich overnight. What I thought we were going to see was a story about how America cheated them of their wealth or stripped them of their rights. That might actually have happened. Martin Scorsese might have intended to bring it to the public eye. That would be unjust if it did happen. But that is not the story we get. What we get is a simple criminal conspiracy, nothing more, nothing less.

The film follows Leonardo DiCaprio playing Ernest Burkhart, a World War One veteran who moves to Oklahoma where his uncle William "King" Hale (Robert DeNiro) owns a ranch. Hale acts as a sort of mentor to Ernest, but doesn't employ him, instead he works as a sort of Uber driver, sans the phones. Basically, guys like him hung out in town in a car to offer rides to rich people. In Ernest's case, he starts giving rides to Molly (Lilly Gladstone), an Indian woman whose family, including a mother and three sisters, has substantial oil rights, though they live fairly simply, if what seems to be comfortably for the times. Ernst pursues Molly, at least in part for her fortune, with the encouragement of his uncle, and they eventually marry.

Over time, various Osage are murdered or die in very suspicious circumstances, an in one case, where the voiceover informs us that a young woman in her 20s committed suicide, a man is waiting on her front porch when she comes home pushing a baby stroller, shoots her in the chest, puts the gun in her hand, picks up her baby and walks off, in one of the sloppiest suicide frameups this side of the Iron Curtain. Other deaths are made to look more natural. Hale is a community leader and very friendly with the Osage, giving Ernest a book on their culture or beliefs, apparently written to educate Osage children, and he seems to speak the language, and helps the leaders of the community seek justice when it becomes clear that there is a pattern going on. However, the film barely hides the fact that he is behind the murders, especially as Molly's sisters start dying one after another and her diabetes becomes progressively worse. According to the movie, she is one of the first four or five patients in the world to be treated with insulin, and Hale helps her husband with obtaining the medicine. Draw your own conclusions.

There were several aspects to the story I thought could have been explored more wrt the issues the Osage dealt with, such as the appearance, twice, of some sort of official who appears to administer their finances for them, including questioning their spending habits or intended expenses. What was the deal here? Was this some sort of condescension, because Indians were presumed to be incompetent? Was it a trustee of some kind set up by her family's antecedents when the money started coming in? The history of American Indians is replete with stories of them losing property or leverage for lack of understanding of white culture and laws, so for we know, this position might have been a good thing, helping them navigate the perils of wealth management. If they were swindling the Osage, the film doesn't show it, preferring instead to focus on the dignity of Molly as she answers his questions, rather than explaining the legal or professional relationship. Another question is why so many Indian woman took white husbands, when in general the tribe and their elders seem to view the whites flocking to the local boomtown in much the same way MAGA types view Mexicans. Were they seeking some sort of acceptance or legal standing that could only come by marrying into the dominant culture? When discussing her suitor Ernest with her sisters (one of whom has a white husband) they seem fairly cynical about it and the gold-digging of these men is clearly apparent to them. DeCaprio's drawl and mannerisms give the impression of being at least a little learning-disabled, if not fully mentally handicapped, and I would say he seems to be at his least-attractive on screen, so it's hard to believe that Molly is dazzled by the packaging.

The film is somewhat opaque about Ernest. He appears to genuinely care for Molly and their children, even as he actively conspires against the rest of her family and people. It's not clear the extent to which he is swayed by Uncle King, or complicit in her poisoning, as he seems to test the medicine at one point, by taking it himself. He seems to be the protagonist of the film, portrayed rather dispassionately, where King is the clear villain, and Molly and family are sympathetic.

What we don't really see is any prejudice or systemic discrimination against the Osage, beyond ethnic slurs and negative attitudes no different than any other ethnic group faces or holds toward each other. It is treated as if these murders are some sort of genocide or at the least a crime of neglect by the rest of the country, and again, this could be the case. But what we see on screen is that the local law enforcement and doctors are suborned by King, so as far as the rest of the world is concerned, these killings are unrelated or accidents. The Indians send a man to Washington to request aid from the government, but he is murdered. A detective is hired and roughed up by local strongarms . An Osage goes to Washington and at a meet-and-greet, gets face-time with President Coolidge, requesting help, and shortly afterward, Federal investigators show up in town, led by Jesse Plemmons, having been sent by J. Edgar Hoover, and rather handily wrap up the investigation, with the drama in the final and what feels like the tenth or twelfth, act being about Ernest's role coming out and whether he will chose to stand up with his uncle or his wife. In the trials, Brendan Fraser and John Lithgow do some good work in a couple of scenes as the defense attorney and prosecutor, respectively, and this might have been a better movie if it had focused on the investigation and trials, through Plemmons and Lithgows' characters, with Deniro and Fraser as the antagonists, but that would have drastically cut down on Indian porn opportunities to showcase the profound beauty and spirituality of the Osage people.

The film just about chokes on the diversity crammed in, without ever really exploring the issues behind it, and could swap in any victims for the Osage without substantially changing the story. Hell, you could tell the same story if you substituted the Clampetts from the Beverly Hillbillies, and Mr. Drysdale for King without changing much. It's impressive from a technical and probably creative and visual standpoint, it's well acted, and while Gladstone is almost certain to get her share and more of praise based on her presumed ethnicity and not-conventionally-attractive appearance, she did a pretty good job with the role. I would not roll my eyes if she was nominated for awards for it, and of course, Scorsese gets his usual quality of performance from DeNiro and Decaprio, who are playing much younger men than themselves. DeNiro actually seems younger than his character in Casino, nearly 30 years ago. It's not a bad movie if you have three and a half hours to kill, but on the other hand, in that same time period, you could probably make a respectable dent in the actual eponymous book the film is based on.