Leonardo DiCaprio wows Cannes with 'best performance of his career'

Leonardo DiCaprio wows Cannes with ‘best performance of his career’: As rave reviews for Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon flood in, they join Robert De Niro for film’s photo call

Leonardo DiCaprio reunited with Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese at the Killers of the Flower Moon photocall in Cannes on Sunday. 

The Hollywood actor, 48, cut a dapper figure in a brown suit jacket and matching trousers, teamed with a black shirt. 

Robert, 79, who recently announced the birth of his seventh child, donned a grey blazer and a beige polo top.

Martin, 80, who directed the new film, stood out in a cream suit jacket and a blue shirt.

Martin’s Killers of the Flower Moon received a rapturous nine-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Cannes Film Festival on Saturday night.

Outing: Leonardo DiCaprio reunited with Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese at the Killers of the Flower Moon photocall in Cannes on Sunday

Impressive: Martin’s Killers of the Flower Moon received a rapturous nine-minute standing ovation when it premiered at Cannes Film Festival on Saturday night

And as early reviews for the three and a half hour epic roll in, it’s safe to say the iconic director’s first ever Western will go down as a ‘triumph’.

A wide array of film critics have already given the Leonardo led movie five stars across the board, with one even hailing it as the best of its genre.

Words like ‘searing and ‘masterpiece’ were bandied about by critics who managed to get their hands on a ticket to the first screening.

IndieWire said DiCaprio gives ‘his best-ever performance’, while The Guardian awarded five stars for a ‘remarkable epic about the bloody birth of America’.

There were some dissenting notes, with The Times calling it ‘a damp squib’.

Scorsese unveiled Killers of the Flower Moon at Cannes, debuting a sweeping American epic about greed and exploitation on the bloody plains of an Osage Nation reservation in 1920s Oklahoma.

Scorsese’s latest – starring DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro – is one of his most ambitious. Adapting David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller, it stretches nearly three and a half hours and cost Apple $200 million to make.

Nothing has been more anticipated at this year’s festival than Killers of the Flower Moon – a bitter crime film and a Great Plains Western – which appeared to meet those expectations.

It drew a lengthy standing ovation and repeated cheers for Scorsese, 80, who premiered his first film at Cannes since 1985’s ‘After Hours.’

Addressing the crowd after the screening, he said: ‘We shot this a couple of years ago in Oklahoma. It’s taken its time to come around but Apple did so great by us.’

The red carpet drew a wide spectrum of stars. Along with the film’s expansive cast, attendees included Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as actors Cate Blanchett, Salma Hayek, Paul Dano and Isabelle Huppert.

Dashing: The Hollywood actor, 48, cut a dapper figure in a brown suit jacket and matching trousers, teamed with a black shirt

Looking good: Robert, Martin, Lily Gladstone and Leonardo posed for a group snap

Handsome: Leo added a pair of stylish shades to complete his look

Dapper: Robert, 79, who recently announced the birth of his seventh child, donned a grey blazer and a beige polo top

Fun: The actor put on an animated display while having his picture taken

Dapper: Martin, 80, who directed the new film, stood out in a cream suit jacket and a blue shirt

Plot: The movie sees DiCaprio play alongside Scorsese’s other long-time muse De Niro, and charts a wave of murders among oil-rich Osage Indians in the 1920s and the birth of the FBI

Career: It marks DiCaprio’s first film on the big screen since 2019 Quentin Tarantino Flick Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. He also starred in 2021 film Don’t Look Up which streamed on Netflix

Successful: A wide array of film critics have already given the Leonardo led movie five stars across the board, with one even hailing it as the best of its genre

Though Grann’s book affords many possible inroads to the story, Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth center their story on Ernest Burkhart (DiCaprio, in his seventh collaboration with Scorsese), a WWI veteran who falls for Mollie Brown (Gladstone), the member of a wealthy Osage family.

Killers of the Flower Moon plot

• Set in the 1920s, it centers on the FBI’s investigation into a string of murders after several members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma were slaughtered.

• Killers of the Flower Moon focuses on a little-publicized chapter of American history involving the Osage Nation.
• Based on a nonfiction bestseller, the film sees DiCaprio play a weak-willed man who marries a wealthy Osage Indian and is drawn into the deadly schemes of his kingpin uncle (De Niro).

The movie sees DiCaprio play alongside Scorsese’s other long-time muse De Niro, and charts a wave of murders among oil-rich Osage Indians in the 1920s and the birth of the FBI.

It marks DiCaprio’s first film on the big screen since 2019 Quentin Tarantino Flick Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. He also starred in 2021 film Don’t Look Up which streamed on Netflix.

Set in the 1920s, it centers on the FBI’s investigation into a string of murders after several members of the Osage tribe in Oklahoma were slaughtered.

Killers of the Flower Moon focuses on a little-publicised chapter of American history involving the Osage Nation.

In the 1920s, the Osage tribe became wealthy almost overnight after oil was discovered beneath their land, earning them more than $30 million in annual revenue at the peak of the boom, according to the Oklahoma Historical Society.

Subsurface minerals within the Osage Nation Reservation were tribally owned and held in trust by the government.

Mineral leases earned royalties that were paid to the tribe as a whole – with each allottee receiving one equal share also known as a headright.

But these headrights could only legally be attained by outsiders if they married into the tribe.

It was during this time that rancher William K. Hale, a native of Greenville, Texas, encouraged his subservient nephew Ernest Burkhart to wed Osage member Mollie Kyle (later Mollie Burkhart).

After hours of waiting in the rain that has drenched the French Riviera town all week, fans went wild as the trio arrived for the premiere alongside several native Americans in traditional outfits.

Leading man: Leonardo cut a dapper figure as he walked the red carpet for the premiere of Killers of the Flower Moon at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday

Hollywood legends: Leonardo was joined by director Martin Scorsese, 80, and fellow cast member Robert De Niro, 79

Smile and wave: The trio signalled to the cameras and the crowds of adorning fans 

Smash hit: And as early reviews for the three and a half hour epic roll in, it’s safe to say the iconic director’s first ever Western will go down as a ‘triumph’

Co-star Jesse Plemons arrived with his wife Kirsten Dunst, while Salma Hayek, Cate Blanchett, and Tobey Maguire were also present.

Based on a nonfiction bestseller, the film sees DiCaprio play a weak-willed man who marries a wealthy Osage Indian and is drawn into the deadly schemes of his kingpin uncle (De Niro).

Killers of the Flower Moon was screening out-of-competition in Cannes.

It is the first time Scorsese, who won the Palme in 1976 for Taxi Driver, has presented a film here since 1985, though he served as jury president in 1998.

It is set to debut in limited theatres on October 6, with a wide release scheduled for October 20.

KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON REVIEWS ROUND UP

The Guardian

Rating:

‘Scorsese presents a remarkable story, with an audacious framing device of a briskly insensitive ‘true crime’ radio show featuring Osage characters crassly played by white actors. This is an utterly absorbing film, a story that Scorsese sees as a secret history of American power, a hidden violence epidemic polluting the water table of humanity.’

The Indepedendant

Rating:

‘DiCaprio, with a mouth full of rotted teeth, offers us a man who is loving and weak and ugly deep down in his soul, a man whose cheek twitches when he lies, and whose body deteriorates from guilt faster than any poison. But it’s Gladstone who provides the film’s centre of gravity. She gives one of the most extraordinary performances by a woman in any of Scorsese’s movies. She is serene but not saintly; a figure of tragedy with a fire in her belly.’

The Times

Rating:

‘The script, from Forrest Gump’s Eric Roth, begins to meander badly, dropping in and out of the murder narrative and ultimately saddling us with a villain in De Niro who’s not nearly villainous enough and a protagonist in DiCaprio who’s a borderline moron. They are dreary company for 206 minutes.’ 

The Evening Standard

Rating:

’60 year-old Quentin Tarantino says he’s quitting the directing game because he doesn’t want to become ‘this old man who’s out of touch.’ What a plonker. Killers of the Flower Moon suggests film-makers should keep on keeping on. I’d even put my cowboy boot on the line and declare this (Scorsese’s first foray into the genre) one of the best Westerns ever made and almost certainly the best film of 2023 so far.’

Deadline

‘Whatever the reported $200 budget, it is all on the screen in the kind of big-screen epic tale Hollywood has been shying away from. Apple stepped up to ensure Scorsese’s vision and this could be a game-changer in terms of theatrical distribution and streaming coming together.’ 

The Hollywood Reporter

‘To some degree, this is a classic Scorsese crime narrative transposed to prairie territory in the script co-authored by the director and Eric Roth. And there are darkly amusing moments of anger in which De Niro’s colourful performance recalls his hall-of-fame wise guys.

‘But the shift into historical Americana breathes a soulfulness into the material that feels distinct from most of the director’s output. This is a film as richly atmospheric as it is character-driven, heightened by the somber colours of Rodrigo Prieto’s cinematography and the evocative details of Jack Fisk’s customarily scrupulous period production design.’

Variety

‘In its present form, “Killers” is still a compelling true story, one that Scorsese and co-writer Eric Roth shifted from being a standard white-savior detective yarn to a more morally thorny look at how the white culprits plotted and carried out the murders. Stylistically, this feels like a young man’s movie. It’s engrossing from the get-go, the palpable tension methodically echoed by Robbie Robertson’s steady-heartbeat score. But it keeps going and going until everyone we care about is dead, dying or behind bars, with nearly an hour still in store.’

Indie Wire

That sepia-toned saga of slow-poisoned self-denial is sustained by the best performance of Leonardo DiCaprio’s entire career. The former matinee idol has never been shy about playing low-lifes and scum-bums, but his nuanced and uncompromising turn as the cretinous Ernest Burkhart mines new wonders from the actor’s long-standing lack of vanity. 

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