Martin Scorsese’s new film is one of the most keenly awaited of the year and viewers don’t have much longer until they can watch it.
Killers of the Flower Moon will star Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert De Niro and has already been tipped for an Oscar nomination.
The Western crime saga is based on the non-fiction book of the same name about the murders of Osage native American tribe members after oil is found on their land.
The film has won rave reviews from the critics.
Here is everything we know.
What is the film about?
The film is based on the 2017 best-selling non-fiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by New Yorker staff writer David Grann. The book details a series of murders of a midwestern native American tribe known as the Osage Nation in the 1920s in Oklahoma. The killings coincided with large oil deposits being discovered on their land.
It has been written by Scorsese and Eric Roth, who also wrote Forrest Gump (1994), The Insider (1999), Munich (2005) and Dune (2021).
Scorsese said of the times he attended Osage council sessions as part of his research into making the film: “I was so affected and so moved. I know what their values are and [that they are] really understanding how to live on this planet. It reoriented me every time they spoke.”
Killers of the Flower Moon is Scorsese’s first feature film in four years. His last major project was the 2019 Netflix gangster film The Irishman, although he directed and produced Pretend It’s a City, an extended interview with Fran Lebowitz, in 2021.
“I want to explore something else, and that is the nature of a whole way of thinking as being complicit in genocide. It’s dehumanising people,” said Scorsese, speaking to BFI’s Sight & Sound magazine about Killers of the Flower Moon in 2019. “I was out in Oklahoma about six weeks ago and, ultimately, as the Osage told me, it’s about greed.”
Who stars in the film?
As well as De Niro and DiCaprio, there are a host of famous faces appearing in the film. Brendan Fraser, hot off his Oscar win for The Whale, stars, as will Jesse Plemons, John Lithgow, singer Jack White, Louis Cancelmi, Lily Gladstone and Tantoo Cardinal.
How long is Killers of the Flower Moon?
Killers of the Flower Moon has a lengthy run time at three hours and 26 minutes. Even the trailer is prolonged, at two minutes, and features cattle rancher William Hale (De Niro), his nephew, Ernest (DiCaprio), and Native American Mollie (Lily Gladstone), who becomes romantically linked to Ernest.
When is Killers of the Flower Moon being released?
Killers of the Flower Moon will be on at the cinema from October 20 so film lovers only have a matter of weeks to wait. It is rated 15.
What are critics saying?
Of all those who have been lucky enough to see the movie, there has barely been a bad word said about it.
Reviewers at IndieWire labelled it: “The best performance of DiCaprio’s career” while the Telegraph gave it a five out of five review and said it was “Scorsese’s best movie in decades”.
Hannah Strong of GQ in the US was equally impressed: “Throughout his career Scorsese has depicted the beauty and the bloodshed that made America what it is today. In Killers of the Flower Moon he continues this lifelong study with crystal clarity. It’s a quiet but furious film, and rightly so. This is our history, and the blood doesn’t wash off.”
