About 15 years ago, there was a fairly good award-winning TV series on HBO named “Boardwalk Empire”. The series was produced by Martin Scorsese and he directed the pilot episode. As I was watching the new movie “Killers of the Flower Moon” I thought about that TV series a lot.
“Killers of the Flower Moon” is based on a non-fiction book written by David Grann. The book details the plight of the Osage Native Americans who were driven from place to place by white American settlers until they ended up in Oklahoma in the 1920s on land that they soon discovered had lots of oil. Lots of oil meant lots of money. Soon enough the white men try to do whatever they can to get some of the money. This includes the older William Hale (Robert De Niro) and his nephew Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) who just returned from the war. One of the best ways to get some of the oil rights is to marry an Osage woman. William suggests Ernest marry Mollie Burkhart (Lily Gladstone), a woman who is part of a somewhat large Osage family.
After they wed, members of Mollie’s family start dying. One sister dies, another sister dies, her mother dies, her ex-husband dies. The deaths often appear to be murders but there is never an investigation. The tribe offers a reward for information about the murders and tries to hire investigators to investigate them, but some of the investigators end up dead. Mollie goes to Washington DC to personally speak to the president of the United States, who eventually sends the FBI to investigate what’s going on and who is behind it, including investigating William and Ernest.
If you’ve seen the TV series “Boardwalk Empire” you may have already noticed some similarities. Both stories are based on non-fiction books that are based on true stories (although in the latter seasons of the TV series, the story turned more fiction than true story). Both start in the 1920s – one is in Oklahoma and the other is mostly set in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Both the movie and the series involve people fighting and killing over money – in the TV series it’s mostly money from bootlegging during the prohibition period.
You could find even more similarities if “Killers of the Flower Moon” was also a series or mini-series. The movie is almost 3 and a half hours long, which would be 3-4 episodes for a series. The movie has quite a few great actors playing strong characters, just like the TV series had (Steve Buscemi, Michal Shannon, Jack Huston, and especially Kelly Macdonald were very good in “Boardwalk Empire”). Every 20-30 minutes, the movie tends to focus on one character or introduce a new character. If this was a TV miniseries those characters might have been the focus of an entire episode. Also, if the movie was a mini-series the last 45 minutes might not feel rushed (maybe that was just me waiting for the movie to end after sitting there for over 3 hours). Finally, Scorsese has said that the initial version of the script took 4.5 hours to read. That’s too long for a movie but it’s fine for a mini-series.
On the other hand, if it was a mini-series, it wouldn’t be as captivating. Lily Gladstone and John Lithgow have been in a few TV series and Robert De Niro is rumored to be in one or two soon, but I doubt you’d get to see Leonardo DiCaprio in a television mini-series even if it’s directed by Martin Scorsese. You’d miss his incredible performance. Also, they filmed the movie in Oklahoma where the events took place around 100 years ago. If this were a television show, they probably wouldn’t have the budget to do that. You wouldn’t see the beautiful cinematography and art direction that’s in the movie. Even if you have a really large television, seeing the cinematography and art direction on a big movie theater screen is worth the price of sitting through almost 3.5 hours. For anyone that’s waiting to watch it on Apple TV in a few weeks, I would STRONGLY recommend seeing it in a movie theater instead.
Overall, I did have issues with the length of the movie and the amount of characters that are added to the plot every 20-30 minutes, but if this movie was a miniseries there is a lot more that I would miss. I recommend watching the movie on the biggest movie theater screen you can find.
I give it 7 out of 10 stars.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 