If there's ever a man who can hide behind some huge facial hair, it's Christian Bale.
You look at the early scenes in Batman Begins or any of the stuff he did in Reign Of Fire and he totally disappears behind it. So it goes with Hostiles, a new Western from Scott Cooper, the director of Black Mass, Crazy Heart and also Christian Bale-starring Out Of The Furnace. Set in 1891, Bale plays a legendary Union officer who's ordered by his commanding officer to escort a Cheyenne war chief - played by Wes Studi - back to his native lands before he dies.
Along the way, they encounter a young widow - Rosamund Pike - and a number of violent, unsavoury and downright hostile (hey, that's the name of the film!) characters on their journey. Westerns seem to be coming back into fashion as of late, what with S. Craig Zahler's Bone Tomahawk wowing critics, David Mackenzie's neo-Western Hell Or High Water getting rave reviews, and even Quentin Tarantino making two Westerns back to back.
What's particularly interesting here as well is that the film undoubtedly has a Native American perspective, something that's been sorely lacking from Westerns since - well, forever, really - so it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out. Hostiles arrives in Irish cinemas on December 29th.
Via YouTube
