Review: Martin Scorsese delivers a new movie classic with 'Killers of the Flower Moon'

If you're looking for a new movie classic, legendary director Martin Scorsese delivers big time with "Killers of the Flower Moon."

It won't stream on Apple TV+ till later, so check your local theater listings (this engulfing epic should never be squeezed onto a smartphone) and get ready to watch 3 hours and 26 minutes of screen time fly by in a rush of pure cinematic pow.

Scorsese regulars Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro, costarring for the first time in one of his movies, are simply stupendous, uniting to show why acting can be an art form in their expert hands. Their conniving characters reveal the toxic greed and racism simmering under U.S. mistreatment of Native Americans.

Based on David Grann's nonfiction bestseller, "Killers of the Flower Moon" is set in the 1920s when oil is discovered on Oklahoma land where the feds had exiled the Osage Nation. Suddenly, they are beyond rich, riding in chauffeured cars and easy targets for white interlopers who marry Osage women, rob them blind and kill them and their families at any hint of resistance. . It's a dark chapter of American history that Scorsese, in a directorial high-wire act on par with "Gangs of New York," "Goodfellas" and "The Departed," uses to explode the myth of western heroism. In the keenly observant script he wrote with Eric Roth, Scorsese trades in urban mean streets for the landscapes of the rural west. But you'll recognize the same tribal warfare.

DiCaprio, in his sixth collaboration with Scorsese, knocks it out of the park as Ernest Burkhart, a soldier returning home to live with his cattleman and uncle (DeNiro), known as King Bill Hale for his iron grip on those around him, the naïve Ernest being first among the dupes.

DeNiro, in his 10th collaboration with Scorsese, is dangerously good as a raging bull hiding behind a mask of charm. He and Ernest speak Osage, the better to set traps, including a marriage William arranges for Ernest and an Osage woman that means disaster for her family.

Her name is Mollie Kyle and she's played with humor, heart and truly amazing grace by the luminous Lily Gladstone, who grew up on a Blackfeet reservation as the child of an Indigenous father and a white mother before she started acting, notably for director Kelly Reichardt in
"Certain Women" and "Poor Cow."

Some were surprised when Gladstone opted to compete for the best actress Oscar in "Flower Moon" instead of supporting. Nonsense. The film, standing high among the year's very best, is unthinkable without her soulful presence. In her scenes with DiCaprio, as a moral vacuum slowly falling for the diabetic wife and mother of his children, Gladstone lets her eyes open worlds beyond words. Her magnificent performance deserves superlatives.

All the actors excel, including John Lithgow and Brendan Fraser as rival attorneys at Hale's trial. The stellar Jesse Plemons comes in late as Tom White, an agent for the newly formed FBI, which figured larger in the book and the first script when DiCaprio was meant to play the Plemons role. The switch happened when the creative team wisely decided the film should focus on the Osage people and not any ill-conceived white saviors.

That decision makes all the difference. You can see it in the actors, including Cara Jade Myers as Mollie's doomed sister Anna, the camera wizardry of Rodrigo Prieto shooting Osage life on Oklahoma locations, the editing genius of Thelma Schoonmaker and the haunting score by Robbie Robertson, who died in August leaving this monumental film as a fitting legacy.

For my money, Scorsese and Christopher Nolan ("Oppenheimer") should be in a dead heat for the best picture Oscar. Both speak urgently about the inhumanity that grows from unleashing destructive power. That warning from the past holds tragically true in "Killers of the Flower Moon."

It's a great movie from our greatest filmmaker. Don't wait another minute -- see it now!