“Martin Scorsese has made a western” should be enough for any self-respecting film fan to stump up for tickets. But “Martin Scorsese has made an anti-western based on the true story of one of the most shocking murder conspiracies in American history” makes it a must-see. So, mark your calendars: Killers of the Flower Moon hits cinemas on October 20, before streaming globally on Apple TV+.
Based on the best-selling 2017 book of the same name by David Grann (The Lost City of Z is adapted from another of his works), Killers of the Flower Moon is set in 1920s Oklahoma, at a time when the Indigenous Osage people had come into incredible wealth thanks to the oil discovered on their reservation. The Osage were briefly the richest people in the United States, until one by one tribe members started turning up dead, their mineral rights winding up in the hands of white business interests more often than not.
The entire thing was a carefully orchestrated and sinister plot, as Grann’s book maps out in methodical detail, but let’s not delve into spoilers (although do read that book, it’s great). But we will say that Scorsese, cinema’s preeminent elder statesman, has once again populated his film with a stellar cast. There’s Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser, John Lithgow, plus Lily Gladstone, a familiar face from the likes of Reservation Dogs and First Cow, here taking her most high-profile role to date as Millie Burkhart, an Osage woman who finds herself unwittingly at the centre of the plot.
Killers of the Flower Moon has clocked in at a whopping 206 minutes, a little under The Irishman’s 209. That’s either a dealbreaker or the best news of the year, depending on your point of view. As for us, we can’t wait to find the wolves in this picture.
