True Crime Unveiled: Killers of the Flower Moon's Disturbing Tale

Release Date：Oct/20/2023

Genre：Crime/Drama/History

Director：Martin Scorsese

Cast：Leonardo DiCaprio、Robert De Niro、Lily Gladstone、Jesse Plemons、Tantoo Cardinal

Viola's Rating：8.7

It has been 10 years since Leonardo DiCaprio and Director Martin Scorsese collaborated with each other in 2013 on The Wolf of the Wall Street. Once again, they developed a feature film on a true story, and Killers of the Flower Moon is about the Osage Indian murders in U.S. history.

Based on the 2017 nonfiction book of the same name by American journalist David Grann, the plot of this historical crime drama centers on how the members of the Osage nation in the United States are murdered under mysterious circumstances in the 1920s, which triggers a major FBI investigation that involves J. Edgar Hoover.

Casting Leonardo DiCaprio, Killers of the Flower Moon is destined to feature some amazing acting. Similar to his previous cooperation with Scorsese, DiCaprio didn’t play the hero of the film, but a tragic character who’s trapped between the greed of white people and the tragedy of the Osage people.

Growing up on the reservation of the Blackfeet Nation, Lily Gladstone is very apt to be the leading actress of Killers of the Flower Moon with their brilliant acting skills. Although compared to their costars DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, Gladstone’s more inexperienced, their excellent performance has earned them some Oscars buzz rightfully, and according to DiCaprio, Gladstone is the “heart and soul” of the flick. 

Even though De Niro has starred in comedies in recent years, he’s back to a mafia kind of villain in Killers of the Flower Moon. What’s different is that De Niro’s character in the motion picture has put up a righteous façade, which makes the scheme even more hideous.

In Grann’s book, most of the focus is on the investigation, and Scorsese’s original screenplay followed suit. However, he later moved the attention to the Osage people instead of the white people, which provides a deeper connection between the audience and the protagonists.

Killers of the Flower Moon is a chilling story about extreme greed that is uncomfortable to witness on the big screen, not to mention that everything in the plot actually happened before. This movie demonstrates Scorsese’s attitude toward the transitional justice of Native Americans.

Besides the creepy truth and the investigation of the case, Killers of the Flower Moon also displays the sad but sincere relationship between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), which even emphasizes the contrast when the murders take place.

Although Killers of the Flower Moon is not a pretty story, it’s definitely one of the best movies this year, and if Gladstone win an Oscar, they would be the first indigenous person to ever receive the honor.

Picture Credit: IMDb