"Hostiles" (2017)

The year is 1892 and mean sonuvabitch Captain Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale) has to drag an Indian he hates, Chief Yellow Hawk and his family to the Montana territory that belongs to the Indians under order of THE President of The United States (fucking William Henry Harrison...Obama). And he is ordered by mean sonuvabitch Colonel Abraham Biggs (Stephen Lang). They should've just called this movie "Mean Sonuvabitches" because none of these assholes are going to the heaven described by God. Despite the good deeds that comes over Blocker and his unit.

This is...sort of a road trip movie with "The Defiant Ones" Each person has suffered great anger and lost at the hands of the other. And along the way they pick up a prairie woman whose lost to the harsh reality of unprotected frontier. Rosamund Pike plays Rosalie Quaid, a woman who is a flower that quickly becomes an ivy. Toughen by the terrain, we get the sense no one survey all that long west of Wyoming.
Suffice it to say, the tropes of working together are there. No surprises. And the people who suffer, suffer the way you think they would. And their teeth are too good for the wilderness. That said, man is this movie brutal. I felt the grime of the wilderness. Tough faces meeting tough faces. Directed Scott Cooper seems to see deep miserable pain. And it is a reluctant adventure. I did enjoy the ride here. It's not that Indians are bad or good and White men suck, it's that given any circumstances, we are brutal towards one another. And with the soldiers in the Middle East returning soon, can these broken people find peace in their enemy. Some die at the hands of guilt. The ugliness of violence that shreds a man's sole is always wrapped up in quiet. That quiet is awful when the sun sets and you have to wake up to the pain you inflicted on others.

Without giving too much away, there are moments when death isn't exactly addressed with the gravity I think it deserved. Some are dismissed rather quickly. And not that we needed to linger on it, since in reality, Blocker has seen worse. And I wonder if tough guys would stand around in the dark and share these ugly death stories with one another (I think they do...many soldiers have felt the brotherhood of cheating death).
This is a worthy movie to tell. A frontier story that is also so very very beautiful. The landscape of untouched land in brutal circumstances is always heartbreaking to me.