Hostiles (2017)

A good but unexceptional cavalry western. The story involves a retiring cavalry officer (Christian Bale) who is charged with escorting his old Indian adversary (Wes Studi) back to his ancestral lands. In the course of events Bale ends up also having to escort a woman who has seen her family killed by the Indians (Rosamund Pike).

What follows is going to sound overly critical, and it shouldn’t be interpreted that way: it’s fundamentally an entertaining, well-made film but some aspects felt a bit predictable and simplistic. The Western has a long history of telling similar stories and not being hugely innovative, and so this isn’t a a massive problem, but Hostiles felt like it was aiming for something deeper and not quite hitting it.

The story is pretty obviously set up from the start for Bale to overcome his hatred of Studi and learn something about shared humanity in the process. That’s all well and good, but it’s a theme that has been done before. My issue with the treatment of it here is that it’s a bit one-track. It’s implied that the Indians in general (and Studi in particular) have committed some atrocities in their fight against the cavalry and the settlers, however this is never shown – it seems as if the filmmakers didn’t really trust the audience would be on board if Studi was shown to have any kind of dark side here. There’s then some attempt to let various characters explore their conflicted emotions through isolated moments of overacting (there’s a scene early on where Bale leaves the fort to have an overly dramatic breakdown), which isn’t really in keeping with their behaviour the rest of the time.

Finally, the story feels a bit forced and episodic at times: Pike’s character meshes quite well with the first half of the film, but their seems no real reason for her to stay in the second half and it comes across as slightly contrived.

So in conclusion, I have spent a reasonable amount of space complaining about the film, but did basically enjoy it at the time: it’s beautifully filmed, well-acted and an interesting story, but is never going to be considered a classic of the genre.