Martin Scorsese’s latest film Killers of the Flower Moon has become one of the most feted films at Cannes, with early reviews hailing it as a “triumph”.

The western true-crime thriller casts Leonardo DiCaprio, Robert De Niro and Lily Gladstone in Scorsese’s retelling of the Osage murders of the 1920s.

Co-written by Eric Roth, the movie premiered at Cannes Film Festival on Saturday (20 May) night to the biggest standing ovation of the festival so far, at nine minutes.

“She is serene but not saintly; a figure of tragedy with fire in her belly,” Loughrey writes. “The first time we dive into Mollie’s perspective, it’s with a force that could suck the breath out of your body.”

The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw also gave the film five stars, writing how Scorsese and Roth have crafted “an epic of creeping, existential horror about the 𝐛𝐢𝐫𝐭𝐡 of the American century, a macabre tale of quasi-genocidal serial 𝓀𝒾𝓁𝓁ings which mimic the larger erasure of Native Americans from the US”.

Writing for The Telegraph, Robbie Collin said that Scorsese had “outdone himself” with Killers, noting that DiCaprio and De Niro are on “terrific form”.

Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio in ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

(Apple TV+)

Some critics were less keen on the length of the film. Variety called the project “compelling” but criticised its running time of three-and-a-half hours.

The Sunday Times was also unimpressed, with critic Kevin Maher calling it a “damp squib” in his two-star review. “The film itself, alas, is quite the dirge,” he wrote.

He later commented: “Worst of all, for a film that is ostensibly about reclaiming the Osage story, the only major Osage character, Mollie, is a passive cipher who’s essentially sedated (against her will) throughout… she stares, she sweats, she groans, she faints.”

soucre: independent.co.uk