Hostiles

In Hostiles, director Scott Cooper (Black Mass and Out of the Furnace) takes viewers on a journey across some beautiful U.S. territory to tell the story of a sad and hollow Army officer in the 1890s (Christian Bale) who rediscovers his humanity while escorting an ailing Cheyenne chief (Wes Studi) and his family from a New Mexico prison post to his traditional burial grounds in Montana. Bale's Capt. Joe Blocker refuses the mission at first, bearing nothing but hatred for all Indians, but relents when his pension is threatened. He starts out with a full (and familiar) contingent of men (the clueless private, the untested West Point lieutenant, the loyal black corporal, the world-weary sergeant who is one stiff drink away from self-destruction) but are soon joined by the widowed and childless survivor of a ranch raid and slaughter (Rosamund Pike). As these stories go, Blocker's party is slowly picked off by Comanches and other hostiles along the trail, putting into question whether they will arrive at the destination. Cooper, who directs raw, brutal films about men refusing to give in to untenable circumstances, offers in Hostiles a picture that takes full advantage of the stunning vistas of New Mexico and Colorado but invests most of the movie's impact in quiet moments between these men and women, when they reveal the devastation that violent hatred has laid on them.