Blackwell local leads jaw-dropping KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON trailer

by Charles Gerian

The trailer for Martin Scorsese's KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON debuted last Thursday and took the internet by storm, signaling one of the most culturally and historically important films not just in recent Hollywood history but, also, the most important production to ever come out of Oklahoma as a state.

Based on David Grann’s exhaustively chronicled 2017 non-fiction book of the same name, KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON explores the horrific murder of several prominent members of the Osage tribe in the 1920s at the hands of cattleman William Hale who was hellbent on taking the Osage’s oil.

The murders became a national sensation and sparked J. Edgar Hoover to birth the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Along with the trailer finally dropping online, the film premiered at the Cannes International Film Festival over the weekend with reviews hailing it as one of the best films of Martin Scorsese's prolific career and caused a rapturous standing ovation at the festival.

On review aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Meta Critic it is sitting at a 97% approval rating and a 91/100 score, respectively.

The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart, the weak-willed and simple nephew of William Hale (Robert DeNiro) who marries into an Osage oil dynasty after falling in love with Mollie Kyle (Lilly Gladstone), a full-blood Osage.

Mollie’s family begins to die under mysterious and horrific circumstances as William Hale pulls the strings orchestrating an insidious conspiracy to find himself in control of the peoples’ oil.

Jesse Plemons plays FBI Agent Tom White who is sent by Hoover to investigate William Hale and the bodies piling at his feet.

Earlier this month we ran an article interviewing Jarad Looper and Jason Murray, two Blackwell residents who performed in the film and, in a surreal moment, Looper was front and center in the trailer’s jaw-dropping opening shot.

(https://www.blackwelljournaltribune.net/articles/12789/view)

The trailer starts with a plume of black gold spewing into the sky, contrasted by the serene hazel and green Oklahoma landscape while several Native Americans dance around it.

Looper is on the far-most left of the screen during this dance.

The trailer amassed 5.4 million views on the Apple TV official YouTube Channel.

On Facebook, Paramount Pictures’ upload of the trailer received 8 million views and 106 thousand views on the Apple TV Facebook upload.

The film is a co-production between Apple and Paramount and will run just under a whopping 4 hours when it is released theatrically on October 20.