{"id":72767,"date":"2017-12-21T00:49:09","date_gmt":"2017-12-20T22:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/?p=72767\/"},"modified":"2017-12-22T00:53:35","modified_gmt":"2017-12-21T22:53:35","slug":"western-springs-back-life-hostiles-brutal-tale-moral-survival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ngradio.gr\/en\/news-el\/entertainment\/western-springs-back-life-hostiles-brutal-tale-moral-survival\/","title":{"rendered":"The western springs back to life with ‘Hostiles,’ a brutal tale of moral survival"},"content":{"rendered":"

Once feared dead but found instead only sleeping, the western has sprung back to strong and compelling life with the intense, involving “Hostiles” being the latest case in point.<\/p>\n

Written and directed by\u00a0Scott Cooper<\/a>\u00a0and powered by a dynamic trio of interwoven performances by\u00a0Christian Bale<\/a>, Wes Studi and\u00a0Rosamund Pike<\/a>, “Hostiles” grabs you by the throat and holds on for the duration.<\/p>\n

Like the year’s previous tip-top examples of the genre, the contemporary “Wind River” and the classic era “The Ballad of Lefty Brown,” “Hostiles” does not so much modernize the western as concentrate on character psychology and dramatic tension, creating a force field of emotion from start to finish that is as enveloping as anyone could wish for.<\/p>\n

While the protagonists and what they go through can sound familiar, Cooper, working from unfinished material by the late Donald E. Stewart (“Missing” and a trio of\u00a0Tom Clancy<\/a>\u00a0adaptations) has made sure that what we see surprises us, not just in terms of plot but also in who his characters are and how they act.<\/p>\n

A tale of physical, emotional and even moral survival, “Hostiles” deals in people pushed to their limits and then some, individuals marked in the deepest way by the violence of the frontier.<\/p>\n

More than that, and this is key, each of the film’s central figures, though still alive, has reason to feel his or her life is as good as over.<\/p>\n

Cooper, a former actor, directed Jeff Bridges to an Academy Award in “Crazy Heart” and Johnny Depp to one of his best performances in “Black Mass.” As a filmmaker he has a matter-of-fact approach that works especially well with incendiary material.<\/p>\n

The film’s title gives an immediate sense of what is to come. On the most obvious level, western fans know that “hostiles” is the descriptor the U.S. Cavalry traditionally used when talking about armed and dangerous Native American opponents.<\/p>\n

The word, however, has a more specific meaning here, referring as well to two implacable enemies, Joseph Blocker (Bale), a captain in the U.S. Cavalry, and Yellow Hawk (Studi), a war chief from the Northern Cheyenne who has been an Army prisoner for seven years.<\/p>\n

Not to put too fine a point on it, these men completely despise each other \u2014 they are intractable enemies of long standing whose mutual hostility is based not on philosophical differences but concrete actions both men have taken that neither one regrets in the least. That is not the end of “Hostiles,” however, just the beginning.<\/p>\n