Post by stephen on Feb 4, 2018 3:49:09 GMT
I don't think I have ever seen such a tone-deaf movie. It really infuriates me how a movie about the marginalization and maltreatment of natives could do the exact same thing to its native characters/actors. It misses the mark on almost every single conceivable narrative point. Everything people critique Wind River and Three Billboards for is exponentially worse here.
Essentially, to write a review would basically amount to crafting a full list of what I would change. A taste:
And so on, and so forth. You get the idea. I really was super-stoked for this film as the resident Scott Cooper fan, but yeah, this was a massive letdown.
Essentially, to write a review would basically amount to crafting a full list of what I would change. A taste:
1. Remove the opening homesteader ambush entirely and replace it with the aftermath of Wounded Knee, when Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) is taken prisoner. Also, in removing the ambush, you are also excising Rosamund Pike's character from the story. This has no bearing on her performance, but on her character, who was superfluous and robbed more essential characters of focus/screentime.
2. Replace Bale's character with that of Jonathan Majors's black buffalo soldier, Sergeant Henry. He's a character who was marginalized for decades in the army, and who wound up becoming desensitized to the brutality of the Indian wars, and he became a brutal slaughterer of natives in the intervening years. Essentially, he had to compensate for the treatment he received as a black man in 1800s America by redirecting it towards another oppressed group.
3. Give Wes Studi a shitload more dialogue/focus/screentime. He needs to be the film's deuteragonist, not the MacGuffin/glorified luggage.
4. Because the mission is essentially a glorified PR maneuver, have Stephen Lang take command of the mission. Also have Bill Camp's character accompany them as a reporter/representative. Also, make sure that you have at least twice as many soldiers than you do the natives you are escorting through hostile territory.
5. Have Stephen Lang get killed with along with a couple of redshirts by an ambush. The ranking soldier left would be Jesse Plemons's naive lieutenant, who is incredibly indecisive, which leads to him relying more and more on Sergeant Henry's advice and guidance. This causes resentment among some of the other soldiers, including Ben Foster (who is not a prisoner they pick up later on but rather a Tom Hardy in The Revenant-type. A mutiny ferments throughout the film. Meanwhile, Henry begins to realize he is being viewed in the way that he views the natives.
6. No stops at other random forts.
7. The other native characters are fleshed out and given more to do. Maybe Adam Beach's sister starts growing close to Henry after he saves her from the initial ambush? If you absolutely have to have a frontier love angle, you can use that, with two characters of marginalized races forging a bond because, in the end, they aren't treated too dissimilarly.
2. Replace Bale's character with that of Jonathan Majors's black buffalo soldier, Sergeant Henry. He's a character who was marginalized for decades in the army, and who wound up becoming desensitized to the brutality of the Indian wars, and he became a brutal slaughterer of natives in the intervening years. Essentially, he had to compensate for the treatment he received as a black man in 1800s America by redirecting it towards another oppressed group.
3. Give Wes Studi a shitload more dialogue/focus/screentime. He needs to be the film's deuteragonist, not the MacGuffin/glorified luggage.
4. Because the mission is essentially a glorified PR maneuver, have Stephen Lang take command of the mission. Also have Bill Camp's character accompany them as a reporter/representative. Also, make sure that you have at least twice as many soldiers than you do the natives you are escorting through hostile territory.
5. Have Stephen Lang get killed with along with a couple of redshirts by an ambush. The ranking soldier left would be Jesse Plemons's naive lieutenant, who is incredibly indecisive, which leads to him relying more and more on Sergeant Henry's advice and guidance. This causes resentment among some of the other soldiers, including Ben Foster (who is not a prisoner they pick up later on but rather a Tom Hardy in The Revenant-type. A mutiny ferments throughout the film. Meanwhile, Henry begins to realize he is being viewed in the way that he views the natives.
6. No stops at other random forts.
7. The other native characters are fleshed out and given more to do. Maybe Adam Beach's sister starts growing close to Henry after he saves her from the initial ambush? If you absolutely have to have a frontier love angle, you can use that, with two characters of marginalized races forging a bond because, in the end, they aren't treated too dissimilarly.
And so on, and so forth. You get the idea. I really was super-stoked for this film as the resident Scott Cooper fan, but yeah, this was a massive letdown.
