I'm hostile to Hostiles. It has nice photography (DP: Masanobu Takayanagi), and Christian Bale is good as usual, but his talent (and that of other fine actors here) is wasted on a turgid PC vehicle. It has the usual PC tropes of the "noble Indian" and faux deep implications of "violence bad for everyone", all laden with gobs and gobs of cheese, "cute kid", and just amazingly cheesy ending, in slo mo no less. Interesting premise, but hideous execution done at the most superficial and "hollywood movie" level. Plus, it's way, WAY overlong. Scenes drag on for no reason. I'm rather surprised at the high ratings it's gathered on IMBD and RT. It's a Western that's learned no lessons whatsoever from the re-evaluation of the format during the 60's era of Spaghetti Westerns. A throwback to 50's mentality of Westerns, with a thin layer of modern era PC concerns on top. Again, a pity as the premise itself is promising, actors are good and capable of giving much more than this poor vehicle, a fully professional crew with a great DP. So much given to the director, and he's returned such a disappointing product (IMHO).
