Popcorn and Inspiration: ‘Hostiles’: Wild West Tale Teaches Letting go of Hostility

Mark Jackson
2/5/2022
Updated:
1/5/2024

Tallahatchie, Onondaga, Wononscopomuc, Monongahela, Appalachia. A-ho! We Americans love the romance of our Native American names, strewn across this great nation like eagle feathers on bridges, counties, lakes, rivers, and mountain ranges. What would America be without summer camps named Camp Ton-A-Wandah and Camp Tamaqua? Apple pie-American blond cheerleaders with a touch of Native ancestry take pride in the high cheekbones their Lakota Sioux or Chickasaw great-grandmothers blessed their lineages with. Of course, all of the above aspects of American culture have currently been declared “racist,” but that’s an entirely different article.

“Hostiles” takes place during the time our European forefathers were still wresting native land via Winchesters and Colt six-guns, as well as weathering arrow barrages, tomahawkings, scalpings, and homestead arson. That’s the framework around this wild Western: a well-told tale of hard-won tolerance and compassion between Native Americans and settlers.

Warriors Escorting Warriors

Americans soldiers escort a Native American warrior and his family on horseback from New Mexico to Montana, in "Hostiles." (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)
Americans soldiers escort a Native American warrior and his family on horseback from New Mexico to Montana, in "Hostiles." (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)

It’s 1892. Military prisons are stuffed with native families. Cavalry officer Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale) is about to retire but is forced to escort Cheyenne Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) and his family from New Mexico back to his birthplace in Montana. Yellow Hawk is dying of cancer.

Blocker’s fought natives for decades, hates them with a vengeance. New Mexico to Montana is a heck of a trek, and he despises the thought of it. He’d prefer a court-martial, but his orders come directly from the president, meaning that if Blocker disobeys—no pension.

After a brief soul-search, Blocker resigns himself to his fate and musters a small troop of soldiers he’s fought with before and trusts. He certainly doesn’t trust the Cheyenne family he’s now responsible for.

(L–R) Jonathan Majors, Christian Bale, and Rory Cochrane in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)
(L–R) Jonathan Majors, Christian Bale, and Rory Cochrane in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)

Settlers Had It Tough

On the way, they come across a Comanche-ravaged homestead, with a lone frontierswoman, Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), swaying between catatonia and hysteria amid the cinders: three dead children and a kidney-shot dead husband.
Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike) in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)
Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike) in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)

The long journey to Montana is interspersed with more hostile Comanche, hostile frontiersmen, abduction, assault, mutinous musings, despair, suicide, hangings, and various other forms of frontier mayhem.

But as time passes, Capt. Blocker and Chief Yellow Hawk, sharing the common cause of survival and doing battle together, eventually reach that place that men who’ve been through a war together reach—rendering them, if not exactly brothers, then well-respected brothers-in-arms. And a stoic attraction between stoic frontierswoman and stoic Army captain stoically burgeons.

(L–R) Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), Cavalry officer Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale), and Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)
(L–R) Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi), Cavalry officer Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale), and Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)

Racism in 1892

America’s had Caucasian–Native American racism since day one. “Hostiles” is a 2017 neo-Western about 1892, depicting combinations and permutations of the circumstances of who’s a racist, and why, and how it’s possible to be racism-ridden and still be a fundamentally decent person.
(L–R) Makaya Crowfoot, Q’orianka Kilcher, Rosamund Pike, and Tanaya Beatty in “Hostiles” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment).
(L–R) Makaya Crowfoot, Q’orianka Kilcher, Rosamund Pike, and Tanaya Beatty in “Hostiles” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment).

Among them is a master sergeant (Rory Cochrane) riddled with PTSD and regret from too much killing of natives (he refers to it as “The Melancholia”) and staggering under the weight of his karmic load.

Then there’s Cpl. Henry Woodsen (Jonathan Majors). This black man is Capt. Blocker’s best friend. And that right there is the film’s message in a nutshell: Caucasian Blocker loves this African American man, and hates that Native American man, until he walks five hundred miles in that Native American man’s moccasins, and then discovers ... he likes him, too.
Capt. Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale, L) threatens Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) with a blade in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)
Capt. Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale, L) threatens Chief Yellow Hawk (Wes Studi) with a blade in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)

A further permutation: While Blocker’s a racist, he’s got a moral compass. Halfway through “Hostiles,” Blocker’s crew is further burdened with yet another escortee—a sociopathic war criminal and prisoner charged with savaging a Native American woman (Ben Foster playing his stock-in-trade, oily, guilt-tripping psycho).

So it becomes: Can you see the difference between this moral racist and that amoral one? Human existence is complicated, and “Hostiles” does a fine job of holding up a mirror for everyone to assess the current state of their own hostility.

Compelling

The action is compelling, and the John Fordian Western landscapes are likewise compelling. Rosamund Pike’s anguished utterances are novel, disturbing, and utterly compelling, and Bale’s veritable come-to-life classic tintype photo of an emotionally battened, gaunt-faced, haunted-eyed, walrus-mustachioed Civil War soldier is thoroughly compelling.
Capt. Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale) and Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)
Capt. Joseph J. Blocker (Christian Bale) and Rosalie Quaid (Rosamund Pike), in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)
The two shortcomings are, first, that while Adam Beach and Wes Studi are the go-to actors for this kind of Native American role, there’s not much for them to do. It also makes one wistful to see Q’orianka Kilcher, who’s carried her own movies (“Te Ata,” “The New World,” “Princess Kaiulani,” and others) basically having to lie around the fire and say, “I am Elk Woman.”
Chief Yellow Hawk  (Wes Studi) and Living Woman (Tanaya Beatty), in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)
Chief Yellow Hawk  (Wes Studi) and Living Woman (Tanaya Beatty), in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)

Secondly, the Comanches are designated as pure evil. That’s a bit facile. While indeed a fiery warrior tribe, the Comanches worshiped Great Spirit, Earth Mother, the brothers of sky and water, the four-legged’s, the two-legged’s, and the creepy-crawlies the same as the rest of their tribal cousins; we needed to see what settler actions sparked their ire.

Comanche braves on the war path, in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)
Comanche braves on the war path, in “Hostiles.” (Lorey Sebastian/Yellow Hawk, Inc/Grisbi Productions, Le Waypoint Entertainment)

But all in all, the message is that we'd all do well to cultivate our tolerance and compassion. Life’s too short for hatred, hostility, and death. Death by cancer. In fact, prolonged hostility causes cancer. “Hostiles” instructs us to release our hostility.

Movie poster for “Hostiles.”
Movie poster for “Hostiles.”
Hostiles’ Director: Scott Cooper Starring: Rosamund Pike, Christian Bale, Rory Cochrane, Stephen Lang, Ben Foster, Wes Studi, Adam Beach, Q’orianka Kilcher Running Time: 2 hours, 14 minutes Rated: R (for frontier-type gun, knife, arrow violence, and language) Release Date: Dec. 22, 2017 Rated 3.5 stars out of 5
Mark Jackson is the chief film critic for The Epoch Times. In addition to the world’s number-one storytelling vehicle—film, he enjoys martial arts, weightlifting, Harley-Davidsons, vision questing, rock-climbing, qigong, oil painting, and human rights activism. Mark earned a bachelor's degree in philosophy from Williams College, followed by a classical theater training, and has 20 years’ experience as a New York professional actor, working in theater, commercials, and television daytime dramas. He recently narrated the Epoch Times audiobook “How the Specter of Communism is Ruling Our World,” which is available on iTunes and Audible. Mr. Jackson is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved film critic.
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