Ben Foster

Traumatic Disorder (Hostiles review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

The life of a soldier is oft met with tragedy, both on the battlefront, and at home. But what happens when his battlefield is in his hometown? Prejudice, trauma, and an unhealthy mixture of isolation abound.

 

Hostiles (2017)

Cast: Rosamund Pike, Christian Bale, Wes Studi, Jonathan Majors, Stephen Lang, Jesse Plemons, Ben Foster
Director: Scott Cooper
released on blu-ray Apr 24, 2018
******* 7/10

IMDB: 7.2
Rotten Tomatoes: 73%, Audience Score 72%
The Guardian: ***

Scott Cooper is an American Director, screenwriter, producer, and sometimes actor. His list of director credits include Crazy Heart, Out of the Furnace, Black Mass, and now Hostiles. Having been active in the industry since 1998, Cooper spent the first decade of his career in the television industry, taking small acting roles before fully realizing that writing and directing was far more rewarding.

His directorial debut, Crazy Heart is nothing short of captivating, and shows a side of country music most of us miss. Plus, Jeff Bridges is amazing in it, so obviously Cooper recognizes casting quality over quantity. Hostiles also features a smaller cast and as it takes place in the late 19th century, has an authentic western flavour, but it’s not a misguided cowboys and indians kind of flick.

Special thanks to Nick Riganas for the IMDB summary of the film –

In 1892, after nearly two decades of fighting the Cheyenne, the Apache, and the Comanche natives, the United States Cavalry Captain and war hero, Joseph Blocker (Christian Bale), is ordered to escort the ailing Cheyenne chief, Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi)–his most despised enemy–to his ancestral home in Montana’s Valley of the Bears. Nauseated with a baleful anger, Joseph’s unwelcome final assignment in the feral American landscape is further complicated, when the widowed settler, Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), is taken in by the band of soldiers, as aggressive packs of marauding Comanches who are still on the warpath, are thirsty for blood. In a territory crawling with hostiles, can the seasoned Captain do his duty one last time?

What I loved about this movie is also what I ultimately hated about it. If I might be so contrarian. I’ve always been a fan of westerns as a young boy, and I attribute a lot of that love to the relationship I have with my father and grandfather, who were both small-town farmers. It wasn’t until my dad moved to the “big city” in his late twenties, met my mom, and had me that the lifestyle cycle started to shift. Either way, they both love westerns, and I have a kinship with anything associated with it.

Hostiles is not your classic John Wayne, Yul Brenner or Lee Van Cleef story – where the heroes and villains are depicted by how long their shadows cast. There is serious consideration of the effect of colonization on indigenous peoples and no ethnic group is cast in a particularly strong light of altruism and rightness, instead each character is morally ambiguous, having both good and bad qualities, just like life should be. But lines are drawn to show both groups and the impact each has on the other. And Cooper does an excellent job of depicting the effects of war and colonization.

Now, what I hinted at about loving, is that in it’s longer run, it tells a great western story, but for that same reason, it doesn’t give characters like Yellow Hawk room to breathe. Which is incredibly frustrating to watch, because Wes Studi is such a legendary actor. Sure Christian Bale and Rosamond Pike are great, and it’s awesome to see how their characters evolve, but if a third protagonist had been given due exposure, this movie would have been phenomenal.

Pros: It challenges our conventions of history and the stories constructed to retell that history. It’s by no means flattering to any party, but as a result it simultaneously feels more raw and empathetic. While not an innovation of the form, Rosamund Pike and Christian Bale deliver great performances.

Cons: The pacing is incredibly slow, and the inclusion of additional characters in the third act feels forced, drawing away from an examination of characters, and into a broader back story for Blocker, which is unnecessary at that point. But again I ask, where is the development of Chief Yellow Hawk and his family?

Runtime: 2 hours 14 minutes

Points of Interest: The film was shot in chronological order, and because it takes place mostly outdoors, the cast was exposed to the elements a lot. Production was shut down on a few occasions to account for weather. This is the second western Christian Bale has starred in – the first being 3:10 to Yuma remake.

It’s amazing to see how the life of Blocker has been shaped by living on a battlefield, and that because the American frontier is filled with tribes and peoples all trying to find their space, he never really gets to rest. Even more interesting that his final mission means escorting one of his early enemies home, and that they come to a better understanding of each other in the process, is very meaningful. I just wish I had seen more perspective from the Chief.

theories Summarized

A couple of final thoughts from me. Whether or not you enjoy westerns, this film is a great candidate to exposure of what western films have meant for American citizens for over a century now. They are effectively a propaganda told through the eyes of the victors. What hostiles does, is try to tell the story in a more nuanced way.

Yes, it does ultimately fall short of it’s goal, both due to pacing and character development, but the parts it succeeds at are well worth the struggle.

Speaking of struggles. I wanted to share this Watch Culture video I did on one of my all-time favourite animated classics – The Last Unicorn. Heavily influenced by classical literature, this is another movie which features Jeff Bridges in a voicing acting role, is directed by the team of Jules Bass and Arthur Rankin Jr. AND the band America did the soundtrack.

It’s highly underrated, in my humble opinion, but I hope this review gives you a chance to check it out or dust it off, as it were!

Lastly, please let me know what you thought of both of these reviews on love, like and share the video, and subscribe to the channel (and email) if you haven’t already. Lots more theories to come!

Tim!

Give Em Hell (Hell or High Water review)

Posted on by Tim Kuefler

The superhero genre is giving us our money’s worth folks. This year alone, there have been 7 major studio movie releases alone. That’s more than half the year spent on superheroes folks. And there are even more planned for next year.

There is this film director who is pretty much sick of it all. He can’t stand the superhero genre, and I can only now see his point. He made my favourite movie of the year and it features real people. No capes.

 

 

 

Hell or High Water (2016)

Cast: Jeff Bridges, Ben Foster, Chris Pine,  Dale Dickey, Gil Birmingham
Director: David Mackenzie
released on blu-ray November 22, 2016
********** 10/10

hell_or_high_water

IMDB: 7.8
Rotten Tomatoes: 98%, Audience Score 89%
The Guardian: *****/*****

 

David Mackenzie is a Scottish film director and co-founder of the Glasgow-based production company Sigma Films. Known for his ability to resist genre and typecasting, his set of films don’t really fit into one format or another. But his passion for a thorough and nuanced story sure comes through every time. His list of directed films to date includes – The Last Great Wilderness, Young Adam, Asylum, Hallam Foe, Spread, Perfect Sense, You Instead, Starred Up and now Hell or High Water.

Mackenzie has made an excellent name for himself in the indie circuit, but Hell or High Water is the watermark which should garner him serious attention in 2017 and beyond.

Let’s talk about the plot for a few minutes though.

As something of a mix between crime thriller and neo-western with the bad guy really and truly played by the bank, the Howard brothers are trying to save their family ranch from foreclosure. This was the result of their mother’s recent death and a reverse mortgage the bank instated to pay her personal debts – if the debt is not paid within a few days, the bank gets the ranch.

The duo of younger brother Toby Howard (Chris Pine) and ex-convict older brother Tanner Howard (Ben Foster) are now working a series of small bank robberies against the efforts of Texas Ranger Marcus Hamilton and his partner Alberto Parker (Gil Birmingham). The rangers are always mere steps behind in their quest to arrest the brothers. The Howard brothers are close in securing enough funds to disrupt the Texas Midlands Bank daily operations for the week throughout its network of bank branches and simultaneously gather enough money to pay back their debts and put the ranch squarely in the family. Toby hopes to leave the ranch to his estranged sons in the form of a trust and finally break a cycle of poverty generations deep. Tanner just wants to do some good after having murdered their abusive father and spent so much time in jail. But he also enjoys committing crimes.

Hamilton is close to retirement, and quickly sizes up the brothers and how the crimes are being committed. He wants one last case before his forced retirement and is happy to dig into his temporary partner Parker, focusing on his Mexican and Indian heritage as a source of insults. Once Hamilton figures out the pattern of the robberies, the window of opportunity for the Howards is shortened and the brothers are forced to rob a bank on pay day in the middle of the afternoon. An impromptu shootout with the mob of townspeople forces the Howards to split up, with Toby narrowly evading capture and Tanner taking the mob with him into the hills, in what will likely end in a stand off.

But that’s all I’ll reveal about the plot. It would ruin it if I did.

 

Pros: The three lead characters are infinitely fascinating, and the details of the story slowly engross you, asking the question, what does a modern day western look like? This isn’t your typical heist movie, it has all the richness of film from the 1970s. Every shot and piece of dialogue is necessary.

Cons: If you aren’t interested in a thinking man’s western, then you might find the pacing a little slow and switch back and forth between the two groups unsettling.

Runtime:  1 hour 42 minutes

Points of Interest: Comancheria (the film’s original title) is set in West Texas and is named after the region of New Mexico, West Texas, and nearby areas occupied by the Comanche before the 1860s. The phrase come hell or high water holds a double meaning for this movie. It can refer to a contract that requires that payments come through no matter what the circumstance OR when you must do whatever is necessary to accomplish the results, consequence or no.

I cannot recommend this movie highly enough. It does everything it should do within the confines of the genres it samples form, and more. The characters are well acted, the supporting cast is engaging, the set locations are evocative, the action sequences are realistic but dramatic all the same, hell, even the subtext is clearly there if you need it. Hell Or High Water is my pick for movie of the year (and I loved Captain America: Civil War and Zootopia). Enough said.

Hell Or High Water is incredibly important in a world filled with Disney princesses, Marvel superheroes and new Star Wars movies. It respects the heavy films of the past, the ones before Jaws and A New Hope came along. The ones that really engage with their audience, and which are being eaten up as television shows at the moment. But films are self-contained stories, and television requires a larger commitment.

I hope that David Mackenzie influences a new generation of filmmakers to follow in his footsteps and leave the capes and tights in the closet. It’ll enrich our lives. But that’s just a theory.

Tim!