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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+Martin Scorsese has built a career making films about the evil that men can do.
Most of his films focus on toxic males who are greedy, have a propensity for violence and little or no conscience.
As they satisfy their bloodlust, they go about their lives untroubled by the evil they visit upon others.
Whether it is 19th Century gangs roaming New York's Five Points indulging an urge for sectarian violence, late 20th Century Mafia mobsters thieving, killing and deceiving each other or deranged psychopaths like Travis Bickle or Max Cady believing they're avenging angels, Scorsese has always been fascinated by the use of violence.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+Most of his films tell us violence has always been a fact of life in his homeland and there is no depth of depravity that those who deploy it will balk at.
Scorsese's latest movie 'Killers of the Flower Moon' is an epic examination of an infamous series of racist murders that took place in Oklahoma in the 1920s.
Osage Indians, who struck it lucky by owning land rich in oil reserves, were targeted in a series of domestic terrorist attacks by whites intent on taking back the land.
Scorsese and Eric Roth's screenplay doesn't simply catalogue the terrible events that took place.
They are also fascinated by the acts of deception, with white neighbours purporting to offer a friendly hand to their Osage neighbours while plotting their deaths.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+Leonardo DiCaprio is Ernest Burkhart, a First World War veteran who returns to Oklahoma after spending his time on the front line feeding infantrymen.
He arrives in Gray Horse, a prosperous, bustling town where wealthy Osage Indians and white settlers mix and heads to the home of his uncle, Robert de Niro's William "King" Hale, a wealthy cattle rancher and politician.
King vows to look after his nephew just like he takes care of Ernest's older brother, Scott Shepherd's Byron.
He finds him work initially as a driver but in doing so, it quickly becomes clear that Ernest is a pawn in Ernest's chessboard.
His goal is to get Ernest to work for Lily Gladstone's wealthy Osage Indian Mollie, get him to seduce and marry her and inherit the oil rich land she owns.
© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+King is a skilled politician, convincing the Osage Nation he is an ally, even learning their native tongue.
However he is playing a much more sinister game - systematically plotting murders that enable white men to inherit the land they regret allowing the Osage Nation to occupy.
Encouraged by King, Ernest quickly establishes a rapport with Mollie as her driver.
Soon she falls for him. They marry and have children.
However her diabetes provides an opportunity for Ernest, on the advice of King, to slowly kill her.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+Mollie's sisters and other members of the community die in suspicious circumstances.
Cara Jade Myers' hard drinking Anna, who carries a gun in her purse, is shot in the back of the head in a forest after leaving for town with Byron.
Jillian Dion's Minnie passes away, apparently as a result of a wasting disease.
Other members of the community are poisoned or murdered, with the deeds to their land and estate passing to the white families who have married into them.
Alarmed by the creeping genocide, Mollie and Osage Elders like Everett Waller's Paul Red Eagle and Yancey Red Corn's Chief Bonniscastle hire private investigators or reach out to President Calvin Coolidge's Federal Government to look into the deaths.
© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+However their efforts are often thwarted by King and other pillars of the white community.
When Mollie loses another sister, JaNae Collins' Rita violently and she starts to fade despite receiving insulin shots from Ernest, she manages to make it to Washington to engage the authorities to send Jesse Plemons' Bureau of Indians agent Tom White and a team from the fledgling FBI to investigate the series of murders in Gray Horse.
This makes King, Ernest, Byron, Steve Witting and Steve Routman's Doctors James and David Shoun, Barry Corbin's undertaker Turton and other leading members of the white community like Gene Jones' Pitts Beatty nervous.
Mistakes are made by Ernest and others which unnerve King.
But will White and his agents be able to expose the plot and King's central role in it?
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+Adapted from journalist David Granny's 2017 book of the same name, a lot of fuss has been made about the almost three and a half hour running time of 'Killers of the Flower Moon'.
However in the hands of one of cinema's greatest directors, the film is not the bum numbing spectacle it could be.
Instead it's an intoxicating brew of capitalist greed, calculated deception, domestic terrorism and racial prejudice executed on an epic scale.
The film unfolds at a steady pace like a cross between an ambitious Western and a gangster film.
But it never drags for those who are absorbed by its tale of deception and murder.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+As the spectacle unfolds, audiences are carried along and if they are sufficiently invested, they will barely notice the passage of time.
In the winter of his career, Scorsese delivers the fully rounded epic he has been aiming for for much of his career.
The narrative, visuals, pacing and soundtrack perfectly blend and the movie never feels bloated in the way that 'Kundun,' 'The Aviator,' 'Silence' or even 'Gangs of New York' did.
Rodrigo Prieto's cinematography is both intimate and at times epic, conjuring up memories of the great Westerns made by John Ford, Howard Hawks and Clint Eastwood.
His visuals captures the beauty of the Oklahoma plains, its flowers and its livestock.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+However at times sweeping overhead shots capture the sheer depravity of the acts of terrorism visited upon members of the Osage Nation.
The avarice on display will remind viewers of Roman Polanski's 'Chinatown' and Paul Thomas Anderson's 'There Will Be Blood' which Prieto's images also rekindle memories of but there are also scenes of weddings and murders that specifically recall Francis Coppola's 'The Godfather' trilogy.
'Killers of the Flower Moon' isn't just a triumph of cinematography, though.
The attention to detail in Jack Fisk's production design, Michael Diner and Meghan McClure's art direction, Adam Willis' set decoration and Jacqueline West's costume design is a joy.
© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+Robbie Robertson's perfectly judged score provides a beating heart for the film.
Once again the movie is brilliantly sewn together by Scorsese's long time, film editing collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker.
Scorsese and Roth also take a huge gamble in depicting King's evil upfront - by way of contrast, Grann's book only gradually revealed who was behind the murders.
However it is a gamble that pays off.
By making the audience privy from the off to the racism and the deceit, it makes the calculated violence they witness even more disturbing.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+It also makes the levels of corruption all the more repulsive.
As for the performances, Gladstone, DiCaprio and De Niro are just superb.
In his sixth feature film collaboration with Scorsese, DiCaprio turns in his finest work to date as an easily manipulated fool - his jawline protruding Marlon Brando style and his lips often turned down into a frown that emphasises his emptiness.
During the film, Ernest gets pulled in all directions and often backs the wrong horse.
He struggles to assert himself and is seemingly untroubled by the horrific demands his uncle places on him.
© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+If DiCaprio impresses, it has to be stated that De Niro hasn't delivered a performance as focused as this in 27 years.
King is one of the most disturbing monsters he has ever depicted onscreen - the perfect embodiment of Hamlet's observation that people can "smile and smile and be a villain".
He's like a cross between the Mob boss Paulie in 'GoodFellas' - always observing and manipulating others to do his dirty work - and psychopaths like Max Cady in 'Cape Fear' or Bill The Butcher in 'Gangs of New York' who excuse their lust for blood by cloaking it in the language of righteous indignation and retribution.
Others will see shades of John Huston's Noah Cross in 'Chinatown' and Daniel Day Lewis' Daniel Plainview in the way he bullies Ernest and others into doing his bidding.
The cruelty and calculated evil of his two faced behaviour is reminiscent also of the treatment of Gerard Depardieu's 'Jean de Florette' by Yves Montand's malevolent farmer Cesar Soubeyran, with DiCaprio mirroring the Ugolin role played so memorably by Daniel Auteuil in Claude Berri's 1986 film.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+It's a performance of such depth and subtlety it could potentially earn de Niro a third Oscar - his second in the Best Supporting Actor category - but we'll see next March.
Gladstone, however, should also be an awards contender.
The stillness of her face stands in stark contrast to the more expressive antics of DeNiro and Di Caprio.
But a fleeting look or a slight smile on her face often says more than what is being said onscreen.
Gladstone often keeps you guessing as to when Mollie is going to twig Ernest and King's true motives.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+Plemons is perfectly cast as the focused agent from Washington who really gets into Ernest's head.
John Lithgow and Brendan Fraser turn up later in Scorsese's film at opposite desks in a courtroom as a prosecutor and a really wily defence attorney.
They don't disappoint.
Shepherd provides an unsettling presence as Byron, while Witting, Routman, Corbin and Jones excel at being two faced neighbours to the Osage Indians.
Myers is excellent too as Mollie's flamboyant alcoholic sister Anna and there are eye catching supporting turns as well from Dion, Collins, Waller, Red Corn, Tantoo Cardinal as Mollie's mother Lizzie Q and William Belleau as Millie's first husband Henry Roan.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+Country singer Sturgill Simpson pops up as the real life Texan cowboy and bootlegger Henry Grammar who King and the Bakhursts engage to carry out their dirty work.
Other musicians like Jack White, Pete York and Jason Isbell turn up in minor roles.
Isbell is especially effective as Minnie's husband Bill Smith who also marries Rita and doesn't quite fit in with the Bakhursts or Hale.
Louis Cancelmi, Tommy Schultz and Ty Mitchell impress as the weaselly men who King uses to carry out his acts of terrorism but who are also easily disposable just like Samuel L Jackson's driver Stacks and other members of Jimmy Conway's Lufthansa heist gang in 'GoodFellas'.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+At this stage of his career, we know Scorsese has nothing to prove.
Yet he continues to push himself and his collaborators to the max in pursuit of visually stunning, character driven stories that often deal with man's inhumanity to man.
'Killers of the Flower Moon' is a staggering achievement that really ought to be seen on a large cinema screen before it eventually tumbles out onto smart TVs and tablets via Apple TV+.
You need a cinema screen to really appreciate the technical bravura.
But it's also the work of a filmmaker and great actors who are not content to rest on their laurels.
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© Paramount Pictures & Apple TV+It might be the closest Scorsese will ever come to making an epic Western.
It might also be one of the greatest gangster movies ever made.
In what has been a remarkable directorial career, it is right up there with the very best of Scorsese's work.
Long may he continue to push out the boat because whatever he does in future, it's not going to be dull.
('Killers of the Flower Moon' was released in UK and Irish cinemas on October 20, 2023)
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