Hostiles - an old school Western with a contemporary message

Rather like that of Mark Twain, the death of the Western has been greatly exaggerated. Certainly, it is no longer the number one genre that once it was – in the early part of the 20^th century for example, the bulk of the films screened in Glasgow were cowboy pictures. However, it remains a genre that, while not in its previous robust health, continues to offer interesting material with contemporary resonance.

The Western is America’s gift to the movies and it is a genre that is sufficiently flexible to provide a consistent commentary on the American century. It really came into its own after the Second World War when, for example, James Stewart’s compelling series of psychological Westerns with Anthony Mann spoke to the traumatised veterans of World War 2. John Ford’s cavalry trilogy – Fort Apache (1948), She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), and Rio Grande (1950) – lauded the manifest destiny of the American immigrants from Europe. Less than ten years later in The Searchers (1956) Ford was expressing his disappointment at the failure of the American Dream, especially in relation to the Hollywood blacklist.

Some of the most eloquent critique of the Vietnam war came in the films of Sam Peckinpah, notably The Wild Bunch (1969). While the following year the ongoing concern with the treatment of Native Americans was highlighted in Ralph Nelson’s Soldier Blue and Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man (both 1970).

The point of all of this is that Scott Cooper’s latest film, Hostiles is in good company. It is a Western which reflects and meditates on the state of the West much as Clint Eastwood did in his superb Unforgiven (1992). While Eastwood reflected on the consequences of violence this film reflects on the consequences of racism.

Captain Joe Blocker (Christian Bale) is an implacable, exterminating, avenging angel of a cavalry officer who, we are told, has ‘taken more scalps than Sitting Bull’. Blocker is a man completely inured by the life he has led to the point that when he is ordered to escort terminally ill Cheyenne chieftain Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) back to the reservation to die in his own land he refuses. In the end it takes a Presidential decree to get him to fulfil the task.

Blocker is as brutal as we have come to expect in his treatment of the Cheyenne until he and his patrol chance upon a burned-out farmhouse. Inside they find Rosalee Quaid (Rosamund Pike), the sole survivor of a massacre which begins the film in unflinching detail. Mrs Quaid is grief-stricken to the point of madness and Blocker is touched by the experience.

As she joins them on their journey, there unfolds a catalogue of racism, brutality and ethnic cleansing in microcosm as the film contemplates the way the Native American has been treated on screen and in real life.

The film’s weakness is a tendency to preach.  The images from Masanobu Takayanagi are breath-taking and the points they make are sufficiently eloquent without the script hammering home the obvious; this is not a film for the hard of thinking and it would be nice to see Scott Cooper give his audience a little credit.

At the heart of the film are a couple of extraordinary performances. Bale is superb as Blocker, a nuanced, thoughtful, construction which shows us the character’s sensitivity without ever abandoning his capacity for remarkable violence. He is well matched by Pike whose Rosalee Quaid has a stillness about her which is much more affecting than any screaming histrionics might be.

There is also some very nice support from Rory Cochrane in a career-best performance as a sergeant who is well and truly on his last nerve, and Wes Studi who brings an appropriate dignity to his role as Yellow Hawk.

Those who like the Westerns action-packed will find enough here to satisfy them but Hostiles is really for those who prefer their Westerns a little more on the thoughtful side. It is worth sticking with, especially for the most elegant and affecting final shot that I have seen in a long time.