Review | Cannes 2023: Killers of the Flower Moon movie review – Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone star in Martin Scorsese’s 5-star bloodstained American epic
- Set largely in the 1920s, Killers of the Flower Moon dives into a series of shocking murders in a Native American community
- The dynamic between De Niro and DiCaprio’s characters fascinates, and Gladstone is superb in another powerful masterpiece from Scorsese
5/5 stars
Premiering out of competition at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon sees the celebrated director deliver yet another remarkable look at America’s bloodstained fingerprints.
Set largely in the 1920s, this epic take on author David Grann’s 2017 true-crime account is an absorbing three-and-a-half-hour saga that dives into a series of shocking murders in the Native American community in Oklahoma.
Scripted by Scorsese and Eric Roth, the film begins as members of the Osage tribe strike oil on the land they’ve been given.
“Osage are the finest and most beautiful people on God’s earth,” says Bill Hale (Robert De Niro), a powerful local who prides himself on his relations with the Osage people, but is anything but the benevolent soul this might suggest.
Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hale’s nephew Ernest, who arrives back in Fairfax, a town in Osage county, after serving in World War I. Urged on by his uncle, he marries Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), a member of the oil-rich Osage community.