Money is the root of all evil, 3.5 readers.
BQB here with a review of the latest Marty Scorcese epic.
It’s the early 1900s and the people of the Osage nation in Oklahoma have become absurdly rich, for oil has been found on their land, and plenty of it. The white man has been hoisted on his petard, for the land the Osage were ordered to remain confined to turned out to be lousy with black gold and well, the white man being the white man, will no doubt want to get his hands on it.
Osage starts out as a rare place in the early 1900s where white people are the servants and people of color call the shots. One such menial laborer is Ernest Burkhardt (Leonardo DiCaprio, a longtime Scorcese collab), snags a job as a driver for wealthy Native American oil land owner Mollie. Before long the two hit it off and are married.
But what starts as a romance turns into horror as Ernest’s uncle William King Hale (Robert Deniro proving he still has it well into his old age, playing a rather menacing, yet two timing, conniving character) convinces his nephew to participate in a series of murders of Mollie’s family members, all in the name of securing rights to the oil land. Mollie, plagued by illness, is a formidable foe as she investigates te murders while her body is ravaged by diabetes, going all the way to Washington to plead with President Coolidge for resources to investigate the murders, never suspecting until its too late her hubby and uncle in law are the ne’er-do-wells. Her lobbying efforts would go on to become a reason why the FBI was eventually founded.
Overall, its a good film and definitely the first Oscar bait of the season. My only complaint is that at nearly 4 hours long (you read that right, a surprising nearly 4 hours long!) I began to wish that Ernest would plot to have me wacked just so I could go home and get some sleep. I get it. It’s an important story of racial injustice that needed to be told, but it really could have been told in 2, 2 and a half tops and after awhile there was just a lot of redundancy and stuff that could have been cut out. Maybe Marty is getting up there in years and lacks a heavy hand in the editing room.
STATUS: Shelf-worthy.
Bookshelf Battle 