"KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON" - A 2023 AMERICAN MOVIE AND ACTOR ROBERT DI NIRO
"KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON" - A 2023 AMERICAN MOVIE AND ACTOR ROBERT DI NIRO
Cannes Film Festival May 20, 2023, to IMAX theatres on October 6, 2023, expected United States release of "Killers of the Flower Moon".
Killers of the Flower Moon is an American epic crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. He also co-produced and co-written the film. This venture is the 10th movie in collaboration with Di Niro and Scorsese.
Martin Scorsese's Native American epic is unapologetically vicious by design.
In the 1920s, members of the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County, Oklahoma, are murdered after oil is found on their land, and the FBI decides to investigate.
Leonardo Di Caprio is the lead actor of the film which also stars Di Niro in a major role and Lily Gladstone as the female lead.
The film will be distributed by Paramount Pictures and Apple TV+. After the worldwide release of the movie, it will be streaming on Apple TV+.
The film's run time is 206 minutes (3 hours and 26 minutes).
The story of the movie is based on a book published in 2017 of the same name by David Grann.
Robert Di Niro is one of my all-time favorite actors. The Best Actor Oscar-nominated movie TAXI DRIVER, released way back in 1976 is still afresh in my memory.
Indian actor Kamal Haasan also said his favorite actor is Hollywood Super Star Robert Di Niro.
Robert Di Niro won two Oscar Awards for Best Actor and two Golden Globe Awards apart from a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.
While giving away the Lifetime Achievement Award, Leonardo DiCaprio said Robert Di Niro is an inspiration and influence for him.
Killers of the Flower Moon is an American epic crime drama film directed by Martin Scorsese. This venture is the 10th movie in collaboration with Di Niro and Scorsese.
Martin Scorsese's Native American epic "Killers of the Flower Moon" is unapologetically vicious by design.
In the 1920s, members of the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County, Oklahoma, are murdered after oil is found on their land, and the FBI decides to investigate.
Leonardo Di Caprio is the lead actor of the film which also stars Di Niro in a major role and Lily Gladstone as the female lead.
The film will be distributed by Paramount Pictures and Apple TV+.
The story of the movie is based on a book published in 2017 of the same name by David Grann.
PLOT SUMMARY:
In the 1920s,
members of the Osage Native American tribe of Osage County, Oklahoma,
United States are murdered under mysterious circumstances after oil is found on their land, sparking a major F.B.I. investigation involving J. Edgar Hoover.
Martin Scorsese said that when he read David Grann's book "Killers of the Flower Moon," he knew that he had to make it into a movie. Scorsese spent several hours together with Chief Standing Bear to convince the Osage Nation to help with the filming.
Leonard DiCaprio and Lily Gladstone in the movie
Best 3 hours and 26 minutes of my life
Robert Di Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in a scene from the film
Scorsese’s two most prominent on-screen collaborators, Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio, are finally united in one of his films, lending it infinite star power. However, the real revelation here is Lily Gladstone as the wealthy Osage tribeswoman Mollie Burkhart, who falls in love with DiCaprio’s chauffeur character, but soon begins to see her family and culture slowly die in front of her. Gladstone turns in a stunning performance that starts out as sweet and powerfully self-assured – but that aura soon slips away as if the life were gradually being drained from her body, and from her eyes.
Scorsese also reins in the violence, without necessarily shying away from it. The director's films, from Taxi Driver to The Departed, often indulge in carnage. But in Killers - which will open in theaters this October before streaming on Apple TV+ - the filmmaker handles violence, particularly toward women, in ways that are no less disturbing and tragic without feeling predatory or sensational.
Like the non-fiction novel on which it’s based, Killers of the Flower Moon offers a detailed portrait of the Osage tribe, the infamous murders committed against them in the 1920s, and the life of Mollie Burkhart, who saw most of her family slain. As Mollie, Native actress Lily Gladstone brims with innocent love and ferocious anger, delivering a performance that’s sure to launch her into Hollywood’s stratosphere – especially as she holds her own against compellingly corrosive work from De Niro and DiCaprio, as men whose warm benevolence is always underscored by an icy chill. It’s one of Scorsese’s most brutal films, yet one of his most thoughtful and self-reflexive, as he crafts a subversive murder “mystery” that leaves no lingering questions save for one.
Martin Scorsese’s modern Western, Killers of the Flower Moon, revisits the Osage murders of the 1920s with a masterful hand, and a shockingly frank approach to violence and white supremacy.
What especially keeps Killers of the Flower Moon interesting despite its epic length is its breakneck momentum, whether through Scorsese’s fluid camera movements, editor Thelma Schoonmaker’s propulsive cuts, or an expert combination of the two.
Review of Killers of the Flower Moon
For a white savior figure like White, the murders, orchestrated by the interlopers marrying into Osage birthrights, was a puzzle to be solved. The members of the Osage Nation on the other hand knew that they were being systemically and brutally murdered for their claim to land by pretty much every white settler flocking in their direction. History repeats itself. And just like today, this Indigenous community had a hard time in the 1920s convincing the law to do anything about the harm being done to them.
"It's not a whodunit," Scorsese told the audience at a Cannes news conference, explaining his decision to overhaul the script after consulting with members of Osage Nation. "It's a 'who didn't do it?'"
White, now played by Jesse Plemons, and the newly formed Federal Bureau of Investigation, don't arrive in Killers of the Flower Moon until the two-hour mark, long after the Osage Nation make pleas to Washington for help. The movie's dramatic shift in focus and perspective turns toward Mollie Burkhart, played as both reservedly fierce and sweetly tender by the incredible Lily Gladstone, and her husband, Ernest. Now playing the latter, DiCaprio takes on one of his most complicated roles as a sniveling husband trying to strike the right balance between loving his wife and making a beeline toward her wealth.
There are more minor shifts in perspectives throughout Killers, a soulful and unsettling movie that is self-aware about how storytellers twist and manipulate truth. Scorsese, as a settler filmmaker, carries on the Hollywood tradition of telling a story about Indigenous people that is not necessarily his to tell.
The conversation about who gets to tell Indigenous stories has been a critical and sensitive one in Canada. The push-back against settler filmmakers extracting these narratives, along with passionate advocacy from organizers at the imaginative and the Indigenous Screen Office, gave way to more and long-overdue opportunities for talents like Danis Goulet (Night Raiders), Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers (The Body Remembers When The World Broke Open) and producer Jennifer Podemski, whose harrowing new limited series Little Bird (directed by Tailfeathers and Zoe Leigh Hopkins) premieres on Crave and APTN Lumi this Friday.
Scorsese, like DiCaprio's character, arrived in Osage and ingratiated himself within the community. There's the same extractive dynamic, albeit far less sinister. But the responses toward Scorsese's self-implicating take on the broken trust between Indigenous communities and settler populations from Osage Nation have been overwhelmingly positive and joyous.
"My people have suffered greatly and to this very day those effects are with us," Osage Nation Chief Geoffrey Standing Bear said during the Cannes news conference. "But I can say on behalf of the Osage, Marty Scorsese and his team have restored trust."
Speaking to The Globe and Mail after attending the premiere, Enoch Cree Nation model and activist Ashley Callingbull said the film is a bold masterpiece. "It made me feel seen and heard and that's exactly what representation is," said Callingbull, before boarding a flight to Saskatoon.
As far as representation goes, the efforts Scorsese and his team made to collaborate with Osage Nation are well reported. Osage Nation consulted on the story. The film, which also stars Cree and Metis acting icon Tantoo Cardinal as Mollie's mother, Lizzie, was shot in Osage Nation, immersed in the community, culture and rituals. Local talent was hired in acting and production roles, including the costuming.
"There is no other way to tell these stories," says Blackfoot actor Gladstone, who broke out starring in Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women. "There's no other way than to step in and allow the world that you're in to shape what you're saying."
She also expressed the need for allies like Scorsese. "Who else is going to challenge people to challenge their own complicity and white supremacy on such a platform except for this man here," Gladstone said, holding onto Scorsese's arm. "Other artists are doing that work. People listen to what this one says."
Throughout the news conference, Scorsese listened attentively to Gladstone, following her cues. Killers is remarkable because of its respectful and communal collaboration, which can be felt as Scorsese and his editor Thelma Schoonmaker make room for something slow, sensitive and considered. In a scene, famously pictured in the sole image from the film available to press for nearly two years, Gladstone's Mollie amusedly makes DiCaprio's squirrely Ernest sit still and listen to a thunderstorm. Like them, Scorsese's film seems to just breathe in the environment.
"It was hard to watch but the world needs to see that this is a painful reality our Indigenous women still face every day," says Callingbull, who has long been outspoken about issues surrounding missing and murdered Indigenous women. "To see the truth on the screen is a powerful statement because we are also showing that regardless of what issues Indigenous people face we are still here and we are rising.
ROBERT ANTONY DI NIRO :
One of the greatest actors of all time, Robert De Niro was born on August 17, 1943 in Manhattan, New York City, to artists Virginia (Admiral) and Robert De Niro Sr. His paternal grandfather was of Italian descent, and his other ancestry is Irish, English, Dutch, German, and French. He was trained at the Stella Adler Conservatory and the American Workshop. De Niro first gained fame for his role in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973), but he gained his reputation as a volatile actor in Mean Streets (1973), which was his first film with director Martin Scorsese. He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Godfather Part II (1974) and received Academy Award nominations for best actor in Taxi Driver (1976), The Deer Hunter (1978) and Cape Fear (1991). He received the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980).
De Niro has earned four Golden Globe Award nominations for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy, for his work in New York, New York (1977), opposite Liza Minnelli, Midnight Run (1988), Analyze This (1999) and Meet the Parents (2000). Other notable performances include Brazil (1985), The Untouchables (1987), Backdraft (1991), Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1994), Heat (1995), Casino (1995) and Jackie Brown (1997). At the same time, he also directed and starred in such films as A Bronx Tale (1993) and The Good Shepherd (2006). De Niro has also received the AFI Lifetime Achievement Award in 2003 and the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2010.
As of 2022, De Niro is 79-years-old. He has never retired from acting, and continues to work regularly in mostly film.
Growing up in the Little Italy section of New York City, his nickname was "Bobby Milk" because he was so thin and as pale as milk.
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