Been doing this long enough now to basically know EXACTLY where a movie will fall score wise before I even do my calculation. I still do it, but I can tell, at least which category it will fall in. I KNEW as soon as it this finished this was a 7. It is a lower end, REALLY GOOD MOVIE.
I tend to bash on Scorsese a lot and I find Leo to be at times, vastly overrated. So, I need to point that out as a bias may seem apart of my score. I will break down this score though, probably more than any other review I have done to explain how I got here.
The story of the Osage Indian tribe is so VASTLY unique compared to I would say any other tribe. A tribe that was, VERY RICH. Not enslaved. Not run off their land. They were sitting on massive oil. MASSIVE amounts of oil. So, they decided to let the white man in, drill, and be paid. A decision as we all know for Indians (letting the white man in) ALWAYS backfires. I, as a man who loves history felt that Scorsese absolutely short changed how interesting of a tribe this was. And THIS particular story. I felt that the timelines were so jumbled, skipping over YEARS. Barely touching on the history of the Osage, their VIEW of what was going on. It was mostly all from the white mans point of view. Essentially spoiler alert, the whites come in and marry the Indian woman which then gives them entitlement to their money and their oil land. Then, Leo and Robert De Niro (his uncle he works for) start their plan (which Leo did not realize at first but De Niro envisioned all along) of one by one picking off and setting up every white person with an Indian woman than killing them through various methods that seem to be hard to solve. Murders and poisonings and disappearances etc. They want all the money and all the land.
This is a 3 hour and 30 minute movie. That is a LONG ASS MOVIE. I enjoyed a lot of it. Anything with Leo will be 7 plus pretty much every time automatically. I thought De Niro did a wonderful job acting. I thought Leo did his usual wonderful acting. But notice I start out with talking about the 2 white people. Now they are the ring leaders, fine, BUT, in that amount of time, I expected WAY more time focused on the OSAGE tribe during all of this, less time on all the schemes to kill them from within, instead of little blurbs they would use to go back and remind us “OH YA, the Indians”.
So storytelling I scored low. I think it could have been done so much better but TYPICAL Scorsese, ALL HE EVER WANTS TO DO, is highlight Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio individual acting. It is always so clearly his motive and not the story. Which is fine. IF IT IS NOT BASED ON AN INCREDIBLY INTERESTING TRUE STORY. Like by now, WE GET IT. Both are legendary hall of fame actors. He just doesn’t seem to know how to let go.
Also, because of that fact that he did such a bad job story telling, of said story, YOU DO NOT FEEL, I believe, what you should have felt after the movie. When the movie ended, it just kinda ended and you went “huh” and moved on. THAT IS NOT how this movie should have made you feel at end. So major docked points there. Interesting story, pretty good acting (of course), pretty enjoyable but not can’t leave the couch or check my phone enjoyable. Some major plot skips or non plot developments as well that I just thought was a big miss.
With all that said, again, this is not a bad movie. A 7.4 is NOT bad. I just felt this had major 9 potential when I saw the preview of it. Big expectations and for me, did not deliver. And it just didn’t come close. That is a review.