Hostiles

A violent landscape, the American West near the turn of the 20th Century, most of the major conflicts having come to an end, the remnants of the brutality that saw millions killed or dispossessed still sparring, contradictory conceptions of ownership clashing with abusive indignation, the law stringently enforced, from multiple opposing points of view.

Hostiles is a solid western, unreeling like a traditional American fight your way home film, ambushes, distressed damsels, kidnappings, trespassing, and convicted belligerents awaiting a weathered legendary Captain (Christian Bale as Joseph J. Blocker) as he unwillingly leads a dying Cheyenne Chief (Wes Studi as Yellow Hawk) from New Mexico to Montana.

As he unwillingly leads him home.

Blocker viciously fought American First Nations in many extreme battles and has the reputation for having killed more of them than any other soldier, after almost losing his life in his youth, women and children outrageously included.

The convicted belligerent (Ben Foster as Sgt. Charles Wills) is cleverly used to pursue this point, as he desperately appeals to Blocker's sense of duty, arguing that he's heading to the gallows for committing a crime less abhorrent than many of the Captain's own, thereby appealing to his sense of justice, while delegitimizing applications of the concept.

But he also appeals to his sense of camaraderie, and that's where Hostiles script excels, by narrativizing the strong bonds forged by people who find themselves continuously facing extremes, and the ways in which they grow to platonically love one another as a consequence.

The loss of one having deep long lasting affects.

Yellow Hawk lost his land, his dignity, most of his family, and his way of life.

Captain Blocker fought in many wars and lost many friends and detests having to lead Indigenous warriors home through hostile territory.

But as they travel North, he comes to understand that Yellow Hawk is someone worthy of respect and was likely therefore leading a respectful people.

Yellow Hawk's honest and fair unracially biased actions slowly redefine Blocker's constitution, and the two fierce opponents start working together, overlooking past grievances, respecting each other as persons.

The belligerent be damned.

They also meet and take in the survivor of a horrendous attack early on, during which her husband and three daughters were killed and her homestead set ablaze (Rosamund Pike as Rosalie Quaid), and as Yellow Hawk's family offers their empathy, Blocker notices their humanity, bonds linked by grief further calling into question past actions, his conduct later on, exemplifying conscious evolution.

It's like their entourage represents a fierce multicultural collective which appreciates both genders and is direly forced to fight its way through a relatively lawless realm wherein which the violent scourge and flourish, like unleashed/untethered tigers or birds of prey.

There isn't much dialogue but every uttered syllable means something.

Themes that are less pronounced in many westerns are brought to the fore such as the abuse of Indigenous peoples, the strength of powerful resilient women, forgiveness as opposed to fury, and the changing dynamics of different cultures suddenly living together in peace.

With a conscientious edge.

That isn't too lofty or complicated.

There's still plenty of conflict, it's not a walk in the park or a bushel of apples.

But it's multiculturally vindicated.

With hardboiled romantic community.

Black Mass

Deadly and daunting, impenitent punishment, organized crime teamed up with the F.B.I., seduce the sociopath and secure the judgment, the incarcerations, the quid pro quo legitimizing his wrath, a potentially greater threat emerging in the flames, consolidating, stifling and murdering away, paranoid, wild and wrenching, James 'Whitey' Bulger (Johnny Depp) and John Connolly (Joel Edgerton), kids from the hood, severe yet sloppy.

Lavish lesions.

Like I, Claudius's Tiberius, when the restraints are removed, Bulger becomes increasingly morose, as Connelly begins to think he's an immaculate golden boy, beyond the reach of bureaucratic suspicions.

Earlier on Bulger's more like a loveable gangster, brutal yet principled, a caring family man.

Depp's performance is brilliant, I don't recall him ever playing a similar character, redefining himself after decades of invention, a salute to dynamic vision, to exotic escapades.

Keeping things local.

Black Mass works, simultaneously building tensions both above and under ground.

Loyalty tragically begets oblivion, living the high life neutralizing survival instincts.

Bulger's insanity malevolently menaces over steaks at Connolly's during one potentially enduring sequence, as he toys with the unsuspecting John Morris (David Harbour), and indirectly acknowledges Marianne Connolly's (Julianne Nicholson) foreshadowed contempt.

Bulger's brother is a senator (Benedict Cumberbatch as Billy Bulger) and the fallout of having a criminal brother is oddly overlooked until the end.

You occasionally see Bulger working or discussing his business but his organization still never seems like it's growing, there aren't any scenes that show him managing a dozen or so people for instance, but we know it has grown because he moves into gambling and buys weapons for the I.R.A.

Perhaps the idea was to make him seem small throughout regardless, thereby formally critiquing his actions.

Life and death, the perseverance of a team, Black Mass celebrates good times while hemorrhaging their foundations, improvised expansions, unsettling impermanency.

Out of the Furnace

Direct multilayered sociocultural oppositions contend, contrast, and coalesce as unpredicted vilified variables resuscitate/implement ancient/contemporary retributive, abysmal, and vindictive plaques, steady as she goes, reap the whirlwind, orderly disciplined straight and narrow paths, wild wanton adventurous tracts, unambiguous bucolic depth, heartbreaking rules, honourable clefts, Scott Cooper's Out of the Furnace, reasonably welding an ethical framework for subverting the law, according to a specific social set of incendiary standards.

The key to my interpretation comes from the fact that Russell Baze (Christian Bale) may lose his job at the mill, the very same mill where his father worked for his entire life, due to management's decision to move operations to China.

The film's villain, Harlan DeGroat (Woody Harrelson), has lived off-the-grid selling narcotics in the hills throughout his life, as his father presumably did before him.

DeGroat's survival suggests that an income can be earned out of the furnace, characterized by an alternative set of non-traditional denominators.

Should the mill close and no alternative well-paying job not requiring an education present itself, Baze will still have to earn an income.

Taxes from such well-paying jobs can be used to create sustainable public schools, hospitals, and transit systems.

If well-paid jobs not requiring an education continue to disappear and aren't replaced, and prices don't suddenly decrease significantly, the tax base required to support public schools, hospitals, and transit systems will decrease significantly as well, thereby increasing public deficits.

Food, shelter, and automobiles will still be sought after, however, and DeGroat's character demonstrates that they can indeed be gathered.

Now, Baze outwits DeGroat in the end, and likely doesn't go to prison, thereby suggesting that if North American workers who find themselves regrettably jobless must embrace underground economics to continue to provide for their families, then they can adopt the strategies but not the methods generationally applied for centuries by DeGroat's contemporaries and descendants, potentially replacing their narcotic provisions with more wholesome contraband goods and services, divergent ecotours catered by moonshine for instance, using portions of their profits to fund schools, hospitals and transit systems, as respectable industrialists (the good bourgeoisie) find ways to once again supply strictly legal employment, at home as opposed to somewhere in Asia.

From one Christmas to the next.

Incisive film forged with coruscating interpretative flames.

Disposable incomes that won't result in jail-time build thriving communities.

It's an old idea, I know.

But it still steeps an effervescent collective brew.