KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON (2024)

After the Osage Tribe find oil reserves under their land and grow rich in the early 1920s, the local white men who’d long run their affairs in Oklahoma, scheme to take profits and rights away from them.  No surprise in that story; a true and important one, for sure, but not exactly filled with surprise.  Equally unsurprising, the kid glove treatment from critics & the award circuit for Martin Scorsese’s latest self-indulgence; packing two-reels of story into a three-and-a-half hour running time,*  (His last, THE IRISHMAN/’19, an equally long marathon.)  A sub-story embedded here on the birth of the FBI thru their belated investigation of the swindle offers major possibilities, fresh angles on an old theme, plus the film’s best perf in Jesse Plemons’ G-Man.  But it doesn’t show up till the film’s half over, and never claims focus.*  Instead, Leonardo DiCaprio returns from WWI, aimless but hoping to work for his politically powerful Uncle Robert De Niro, a sort of Oklahoma version of one of those ‘benevolent’ White capitalist bullies Edward Arnold used to play in Frank Capra movies.  Bob’s really out to murder his way into an oil fortune with help from his naïf nephew who’s married into the clan.  But as DiCaprio is 50+ when his character needs to be 25 to make sense, he comes off as a bigger villain & a bigger dope than we can invest our emotions in.  While a nefarious De Niro, unable to just rely on his intimidating stare, the fallback gesture he over-relies on in mid-list fare, a habit that likely kept Scorsese looking elsewhere for an alter-ego for nearly three decades (1985 -  2019), brings out a truly odd solution: channeling Robert Duvall as an acting model all thru this film.

SCREWY THOUGHT OF THE DAY:  *Marty knows it, too, fashioning a five-minute radio show recap of the whole plot for a burlesque coda; even taking a cameo role in it.  A gag or an insult?  Tone deaf or Brechtian?  Discuss.

ATTENTION MUST BE PAID:  *Besides Plemons, the other worthy element in here is Jack Fisk’s production design.  Even if Scorsese tries to sabotage it with ill-considered camera moves (interiors and exteriors) aping his famous nightclub back-entrance intro shot in GOODFELLAS/90.