Killers of the Flower Moon dramatises a shocking, real-life American conspiracy. And with director Martin Scorsese at the helm, the movie will be a cut above your standard historical biopic. Instead, Killers of the Flower Moon is already being acclaimed as a sweeping, near-Shakespearian tragedy that takes the hatchet to American society and the underlying human tendency towards greed and corruption.
The famed director of Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas has now fashioned a mammoth, four-hour drama, based on the book of the same name by David Grann, that explores the crisis that befell the Osage Sioux Nation in the early 20th century. Having been manoeuvered onto impractical parcels of land by successive US government policies, the Osage then found themselves atop the most oil-rich area in the entire country.
The Osage were quick to capitalise on their find and soon enjoyed the trappings of wealth. However, they soon started dying in mysterious circumstances, prompting the intervention of the nascent FBI to blow the lid off a horrific and murderous plot.
Scorsese muses Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro pair with striking screen newcomer Lily Gladstone for a story that intermingles the personal and the political to deliver a damning statement on American expansion, capitalism and the exploitation of the country's indigenous peoples. These arresting new posters tease what's to come.
When you have a filmmaking legend teaming with this cast to expose the bedrock of American society, it promises a rich and riveting big-screen experience. Jesse Plemons, Brendan Fraser and John Lithgow also feature in Killers of the Flower Moon, which gets a wide release from Apple and Paramount on October 20th.