'Killers of the Flower Moon' review: Martin Scorsese at his best

There are no cowboys or covered wagons in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” but it’s the closest he’s come yet to making a Western. Set in the 1920s, when the settling of the frontier had already become a national myth, this disquieting true story proves that the rush for Native American land and resources was not over — it just took on a quieter and more insidious form.

Based on David Grann’s 2017 book, the movie introduces us to the Osage Nation, a tribe whose swath of Oklahoma turned out to be virtually roiling with oil. Now flush with cash, the Osage people ride around in limousines driven by poor white folks. That’s how a drifting World War I veteran, Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), meets the oil-rich Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone). It’s true love, at least for a gold digger like Ernest.

Amiable, lazy and none too bright, Ernest is a pawn of his uncle, the local power broker William “King” Hale (a terrific Robert De Niro). A Boss Tweed type hiding behind a mask of piety, King blesses every white-Osage union, always making sure the white husbands receive “headrights” — that is, their wives’ oil wealth. And somehow, the wives never seem to live very long.

It's a horrifying tale, and Scorsese (who wrote the screenplay with Eric Roth) is the perfect director to tell it. Borrowing from “The Departed” and “Gangs of New York,” Scorsese digs into themes of loyalty and betrayal, once again casting DiCaprio as a man caught in a maelstrom of violence.

The murders of Osage men and women are staged bluntly, though there’s a touch of classic Hitchcock in Mollie’s suspicion that she's being slowly poisoned. When Jesse Plemons shows up as federal investigator Tom White, this three-plus hour saga quickens into a police procedural.

Scorsese takes care to give the Osage a voice before and behind the camera. Every Osage role went to a Native American: Everett Waller, a nonprofessional actor who plays tribal leader Paul Red Eagle, delivers some of the film’s most powerful and poignant speeches.

Gladstone radiates a quiet dignity as Mollie even if her too-trusting character can be frustrating. Longtime Scorsese collaborator Robbie Robertson (himself of Cayuga and Mohawk descent), who died in August, delivers a rock-inflected score that somehow suits the period.

“You’ve got a better chance of convicting a guy for kicking a dog than killing an Indian,” says one remorseless fellow. The word racism doesn’t even begin to describe the mindset of these men, who somehow lived happily, and quite comfortably, among the people they destroyed.

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com@raferguzman