Hostiles
Saturday, February 10, 2018 3:21:23 PM | (Age Not Specified)
I’ve never liked road pictures—including such lauded films as Easy Rider and Thelma and Louise. My distaste is generated by the nature of the genre: Road movies are invariable episodic. The characters head down the road and at each town (or valley or creek) have another contrived adventure. The movies are not so much an integrated and fleshed-out development of the characters facing a life dilemma as a collection of little scenarios laid down one on top of the other. I call them pancake movies.
Hostiles is that kind of film. As a result, often the mini-scenarios are overly sentimental. Let me explain. In artistic storytelling (theatre, movies, books) there is a difference between sentiment and sentimentality. If the author or screenwriter is tugging on the reader or viewer to weep or anger without first developing the characters, we feel exploited. The scene comes across as sickly sweet—the cornerstone of sentimentality.
For example, in Hostiles there is a scene between the leading character, Captain Joseph Blocker, played by Christian Bale and his wounded black corporal, performed by Jonathan Majors. The emotion of camaraderie and mutual affection is played well but to the hilt. As a viewer, we feel abused by the screenwriter—at least this viewer did.
Movie buffs will recognize the storyline within the first twenty minutes of the film: Hated enemies will become the most profound friends. Okay, we get that, but most of the time the bonding feels rushed and, therefore, sentimental. Real sentiment requires time—and relevant detail—to develop pre-existing enmity and eventual kinship.
Those concerns aside, the movie is diverting enough. The acting is solid, although I would have appreciated greater existential turmoil in the eyes of the lead actors as they made their transition from haters to lovers.
In the end, it is an entertaining movie that—with more patience and attention to detail—could have been a great movie.