Killers of the Flower Moon
Director: Martin Scorsese
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro, Lily Gladstone
Genre: Feel the length
When is an epic not epic? When it’s just long.
Killers of the Flower Moon is almost three-and-a-half hours long. Lots of film reviewers and marketing people are referring to it as an epic. But only because it is very long. That doesn’t mean it’s a bad film. Quite the opposite. It may lack epic aesthetic and broad landscapes, massive casts and huge special effects, but it’s a story that drags you in, exposes you to American Indian shocking historical insights and keeps your attention for the full three-and-a-half hours.
Combine that with fantastic acting, especially from Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro, who tend to be over-the-top character actors (not that that’s a bad thing) but in this case are subtle and complex, and you have some fascinating storytelling.
But that begs the question of why this is a film at all. It’s not a story that would work better on a big screen than a small screen. And that goes to the reason why this is not an epic. It would work just as well as four episodes on a streaming service. Maybe it was the choice of the famous director Martin Scorsese, whose reputation is all about making famous “epics” such as Gangs of New York (2002 – 168 minutes), The Wolf of Wall Street (2013 – 180 minutes) and The Irishman (2019 – 209 minutes).
So, feel free to wait until the film is released on TV and then pick and choose when your episodes start and finish. It won’t negatively impact the story; indeed it may even help you if concentration isn’t your thing.
Rating: Three-and-a-half hours.
