By Ray Bennett
TORONTO – Scott Cooper opens his muscular Western tale “Hostiles” with a horrifying sequence of slaughter and he sustains a palpable level of dread as a group of travellers journey hundreds of miles through some of the most gorgeous landscape in America. It’s a constant reminder that the most dangerous element of wilderness can be human.
Handsome and intense, the film tells of a small unit of cavalry officers ordered to escort an imprisoned Cheyenne family north from New Mexico to Montana so their dying chief may be laid to rest in traditional burying grounds. It’s 1892 and the Indian Wars are mostly over although renegades haven’t given up the fight. The U.S. Army and the region’s Native Americans have gone at each other with equal savagery and the scars show on both the soldiers and their tribal foe. Continue reading
