I’m typing this column up at my desk on the Monday morning after the 2024 Golden Globes, a week after the Music City Film Critics handed in our individual nominations, and the day our group of local cinema scribes announced our list of official 2023 movie nominations. Award season is well upon us and there were a number of solid movies in theaters this year. From May December to American Fiction to Godzilla Minus One, to box office blockbusters like last summer’s one-two punch of Barbie and Oppenheimer. Underrated gems (Napoleon) and overrated bores (The Holdovers) are a seasonal staple this time of year, but for me, 2024 delivered one great film that separated itself from the pack.
Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon tells the true story of the murder of members of the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in the 1920s. When the Osage found oil on their tribal lands they became wealthy and a corrupt political boss began scheming to steal their mineral rights by killing them. Killers of the Flower Moon is a slow drama with a nearly three-and-a-half-hour runtime. It also missed at the box office, earning only 156.3 million against a budget of 200 million. But it’s clear from the film’s opening scene that we’re watching the work of master moviemakers, and Scorsese effortlessly transports all of the gritty criminal realism of his best works from modern New York to the American West a century ago. As with all of Scorsese’s best films, he shows us the violence and corruption at the heart of criminal subcultures while also avoiding cliched characterizations and easy moralizing. The results are a both captivating and disturbing masterpiece that’s greater than the sum of its impressive parts.
Killers of the Flower Moon might be the best ensemble acting film in a year that includes great ensemble acting in movies like May December and American Fiction. The movie is especially notable for giving us fresh new performances from Scorsese film veterans alongside virtuoso turns from relative newcomers. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, a World War I vet who returns to America after the war and accepts a job from his uncle William King Hale (Robert De Niro) who is a sheriff and a cattle rancher, posing as a benefactor to the Osage. DiCaprio’s Ernest is greedy and stupid, and one of the biggest highlights of the film is watching the actor bring so much thorough intensity to such an unflattering role. De Niro has been criticized for years for lazy performances in throwaway movies, cashing big checks to underwrite his Tribeca Film Festival.
De Niro’s earned any opportunity he chooses to follow, but his work with Scorsese here is a return to form that reminds viewers what a great villain he can be. The cast includes seamless small turns from Jesse Plemons as an FBI investigator, and Brendan Fraser as a bombastic defense attorney, but the standout performance in Killers of the Flower Moon comes from Lily Gladstone who plays Mollie Kyle, a wealthy Osage whose family owns oil rights. Gladstone was in First Cow and in the FX channel show Reservation Dogs, but Killers of the Flower Moon is her big breakout. I expect her and De Niro to both get Oscar nominations and Gladstone is going to win every best actress slot she’s nominated for including the Academy Award. She just won her Golden Globe but that’s just the beginning of the avalanche.
Another notable character in the film is the late great Robbie Robertson’s hypnotic, percussive score which is as raw, atmospheric and intense as the scenes that inspired it. Killers of the Flower Moon still finds Scorsese in excellent form and attracting the best new and established talent in Hollywood. And, for me, this is the best movie of the year.
Killers of the Flower Moon is streaming on demand
Joe Nolan is a critic, columnist and performing singer/songwriter based in East Nashville. Find out more about his projects at www.joenolan.com.