Hostiles (2017) - Mighty western goes awry for Cooper

♥♥

 

Similarities, hostilities, black and white notions ... are indicated as thematic material on this poster for Scott Cooper's Hostiles

An Indian-hating army captain gets as assignment to lead a Cheyenne chief and his family through dangerous terrain in order for them to be set free. But on the way they meet a victim from a massacre.

 

Hostiles is written by Donald E. Stewart (Missing (1982)) and co-writer/co-producer/director Scott Cooper (Crazy Heart (2009)).

The film stays gripping and very promising for a long time for a western-lover. Christian Bale (Knight of Cups (2015)) is good as the hard, bearded captain, and the scenery is outstandingly handsome. Cinematographer Masanobu Takayanagi's (Black Mass (2015)) images beautifully capture the magic of the West's wide open spaces.

The more disappointing it gets when the film keels over into pompous self-seriousness, since Cooper now wants to strike home a point about racism and the negativity of violence: SPOILER By letting Bale (and Rosamund Pike (Radioactive (2019)) as the woman who loses her family to the Indians) risk their lives for the Cheyenne family, whom they now feel as bodyguards for! That is not credible, and the film becomes overlong to boot, ultimately a disappointment.

 

Related posts:


Scott Cooper: 2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]  

Crazy Heart (2009) or, The Weary Kind

 

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: 39 mil. $

Box office: 35.6 mil. $

= Huge flop (returned 0.91 times its cost)

[Hostiles premiered 2 September (Telluride Film Festival) and runs 133 minutes. Shooting took place from July - September 2016 in Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. The film opened #36 to a 22k $ first weekend in 3 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #3 and in 2,934 theaters (different weeks), grossing 29.8 mil. $ (83.7 % of the total gross). The 2nd and 3rd biggest markets were France with 2.9 mil. $ (8.1 %) and the UK with 1 mil. $ (2.8 %). Cooper returned with Antlers (2021). Bale returned with a voice performance in Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (2018, VoD) and theatrically in Vice (2018); Wes Studi (A Love Song (2022)) in A Dog's Way Home (2019); and Pike in Beirut (2018). Hostiles is fresh at 70 % with a 6.80/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Hostiles?

Crazy Heart (2009) or, The Weary Kind

♥♥♥♥

+ Best Music Movie of the Year

A scruffy-looking Jeff Bridges with a guitar on the poster for Scott Cooper's Crazy Heart

QUICK REVIEW:

Bad Blake lives the destructive life on the road as a touring musician, which comes with his name and the shitty venues he gets booked at. He meets a wonderful woman in Santa Fe, but SPOILER the booze gets to become fateful for him.

Jeff Bridges (The Big Lebowski (1998)), winning his only Oscar so far for the effort, acts well, and so does his co-stars,Colin Farrell (Minority Report (2002)) and Maggie Gyllenhaal (Secretary (2002)), who was Oscar-nominated for her performance.
The music by T Bone Burnett (Walk the Line (2005)) and Stephen Bruton (Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas (1991)) is terrific, and Burnett also won the Best Original Song Oscar along with Ryan Bingham (The Bridge (2013-14)) for their The Weary Kind.
Crazy Heart is a fine, warm, down-played Americana serving, a romantic drama in a blanket of country music. However, it is actually so subdued in its languid pace that it just manages to get by on its charm without getting boring. The suspense curve is almost non-existing.
It is the successful debut of Virginian Scott Cooper (Out of the Furnace (2013)), who adapted the script from a 1987 novel by Thomas Cobb. Cooper is busy now with the big gangster movie Black Mass (2015) about Whitey Bulger.

Related posts:

2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED IV]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2009 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I] 

Watch the trailer here

Cost: 7 mil. $
Box office: 47.4 mil. $
= Big hit
[Funded by Country Music Television, the film was pitched for a direct-to-DVD-release, but was then picked up for theatrical release by Fox Searchlight Pictures and made 39.4 mil. (83 % of its gross) in the US, where it hit home with a lot of people.]

What do you think of Crazy Heart?
Other fine country music movies?