HOSTILES

Scott Cooper doesn't make films for a mass audience nor indeed does he make films to please the Oscar-givers, (with the exception admittedly of his debut film which won Jeff Bridges the Best Actor Oscar), but he is still one of the best directors working anywhere in the world today. If there are common themes running through his work you might say they are masculinity and that of the outlaw; the outlaw as in men who stand on the other side of the law. His films are usually violent and relentless, his debut "Crazy Heart" being the rare exception, though it too dealt with a kind of outlaw, a country-and-western singer unwilling to conform. 

"Hostiles" is a western but while in style it adheres very much to the kind of classic westerns John Ford himself might have made, the plot is very different from what we have become used to. It stars Christian Bale, (outstanding, but when is he ever less than outstanding), as the soldier tasked with escorting an Indian chief and his family back to their homeland and through 'hostile' territory. On route he meets a woman, (the excellent Rosamund Pike), whose family have been massacred and he is forced to bring her along.

It is a totally uncompromising film and deals with the kind of subject matter, (guilt, grief, redemption, forgiveness), that the commercial cinema often overlooks and Cooper handles these themes with a rare seriousness. As I said, he is a director who makes few concessions; he seems unconcerned with who will watch his films. "Hostiles" has all the hallmarks of a great western but despite the violence and its action sequences is unlikely to appeal to a mass audience any more than his last two films did. Nevertheless, he remains one of the few directors whose next film I really look forward to seeing.