There have been some epic Westerns of the last 25 years from Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Revenant to No Country For Old Men, There Will Be Blood and True Grit. But the most underrated of them all was tragically overlooked for Oscars when it released in 2017.
Written and directed by Scott Cooper, Hostiles stars Christian Bale as a US Army cavalry officer in 1892 New Mexico territory. He and a detail are ordered by the president to escort a cancer-stricken Cheyenne war chief (Wes Studi) and his family through the Wild West to their Montana home.
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Hostiles poster (Image: ENTERTAINMENT STUDIOS MOTION PICTURES)
This bloody and brutal Western with emotional performances from Bale and his co-stars Rosamund Pike also features Jesse Plemons and pre-fame Timothée Chalamet and Jonathan Majors. Pike barely spoke to Bale outside of shooting their scenes on the set of this beautifully shot Western, She said the Batman star “would keep a distance. Our characters in Hostiles are quite dysfunctional, but have this profound connection that we let happen without ever really talking about it.”
Hostiles is streaming on Amazon Prime Video (Image: ENTERTAINMENT STUDIOS MOTION PICTURES)
Meanwhile, the story the script was based on was penned in the 1990s by the late screenwriter Donald E Stewart. His widow discovered the draft when moving house and pitched it to Cooper.
Hostiles is now streaming on Amazon Prime.