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Hostiles

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Hostiles (2017)

December. 22,2017
|
7.2
|
R
| Drama History Western
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A legendary Native American-hating Army captain nearing retirement in 1892 is given one last assignment: to escort a Cheyenne chief and his family through dangerous territory back to his Montana reservation.

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Baseshment
2017/12/22

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

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FuzzyTagz
2017/12/23

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

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BelSports
2017/12/24

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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Kaydan Christian
2017/12/25

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

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A
2017/12/26

That is vicious! That must have been at least an R rating immediately.Good mouth plan.Books, the smart phone of the Old West.Raisins and pickles for a month?! Oh my lord.A fort without walls?Very high attrition rate.

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vici_rsa
2017/12/27

Impressive film. Great performance of Christian Bale. Thank you so much for this film.

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beorhhouse
2017/12/28

Dances With Wolves, Hostiles, Woman Walks Ahead, and Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, and this film should all be viewed in order to get a fairly well-rounded picture of what actually happened in the late 19th Century with the removal of the Indians from their homelands. This one stands out as the best of all four because of the brutal honesty and the in-depth study of the main characters. With Dances With Wolves, many of us are tempted to utterly hate the U.S. Army and see them as evil paper-doll cutouts worthy only of burning, but the soldiers in this film are real people. They explain why they had to be brutal. Now we all know that war is wrong for any reason, and that there is always a better way to go about doing business with people perceived to be the enemy. However, once in the middle of it, what does one do when he witnesses firsthand a violent tribe of aboriginals doing everything they can to protect their homeland, which includes killing him and his fellow soldiers? He has no choice at that point other than to become just as violent. Well, maybe he does have a choice. Dances With Wolves (the Costner character) becomes an Indian. That is a possibility, but during this era one would have had to go deep into Canada to maintain the lifestyle. In any case, the soldiers in this film were burdened by what they had been told to do by the U.S. Gov't. There is one beautiful scene which fully supports the idea that God is still in control, and the person speaking the truth becomes the light for the whole film, the whole story.

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kenstallings-65346
2017/12/29

Many reviewing Hostiles have chosen to seize upon avenues to criticize the film. Most common is the unfortunate chronological error where the Presidential order directing the mission was signed by Benjamin Harrison. This places the story in the period of 1889 to 1893, years too late to make sense. Such a mistake is lamentable. The time period of the story would have ideally taken place from 1879 to 1880, when Rutherford Hayes was President, and the United States had largely defeated hostile tribes in the southwest and northern plains, but would be before the establishment of the railroad lines in New Mexico. This would have necessitated the pack mule excursion to Montana. It also would have allowed sufficient time to pass, given the references to Wounded Knee (1873) and Little Big Horn (1876), for the bitter memories to start to recede and allow the reflections shown in the movie to take place.However, a fair review of this movie must avoid getting bogged down in historical minutia and instead focus on the story, because it is very poignant.In many ways, this movie is to be congratulated for avoiding the modern day political traps that permeate so much of entertainment today. The opening scene is brutal and forms the core of the story. A band of renegades attack a settlement home and leave a gash of misery in their wake. But, that is the coda of what the protagonists deal with, past chapters of great violence in a collision of hostile cultures. The isolated acts of violence that happen later are as much a cleaning up of past deeds and a completion of the catharsis of reconciliation.This movie is an immersion into the psyche of those who carry out acts of wartime violence, in a fight for survival, and how they try to retain their sanity and civility. As the story shows, some handle it better than others. None escape without deep scars.There is a second theme that runs throughout the movie, ignorant people at the beginning and the end, attempting to lodge their persuasion onto the protagonists. None of these men suffered the wartime violence, but instead try to insert an empty moralizing, or attempt to enact their selfish will despite the clear Presidential mandate to allow the mission to proceed. The reporter at the start of the film is silenced through humiliation. The second group at the end of the film meets a more lasting end. And at the end, we are left with shared misery among the few survivors, who try to bravely go on with what is left good to cling to.Christian Bale is masterful in this movie. It is sad that his performance was not properly recognized. Ultimately, this is a story of redemption, and in that regard it mirrors what took place over generations in America. A clash of survival ending with one side defeated, while both sides had to reconcile the shared experience of brutality. It avoids political finger-pointing, and in that regard strikes the proper degree of respect for both sides in this American struggle. It is a welcome addition to Hollywood's collection of period movies.

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