Khoi Vinh’s review published on Letterboxd:
First time I saw this, in the theater last November, I thought it was a great movie crushed under the weight of an excessive runtime. This viewing, at home via Apple TV+, it seems less like an overburdened masterwork and more like a mess.
The editing is surprisingly shambolic, with at least a few sequences, like the last act recounting of a murder in flashback, seemingly out of logical order. It’s also really sloppy about its sense of place; it’s often hard to know whose home we’re in, whether in the city or the country. In one scene Leonardo DiCaprio is driving through a suburban street like he’s never seen it before, and in the next scene he seems to be living there.
The most incongruous thing of all is the fundamental relationship between DiCaprio’s character, objectively a dimwit and a coward, and Lily Gladstone’s, who is soulful and searching. It’s hard to buy that she would really be in love with him, or that she’s not aware on some level of his culpability in the horrors surrounding her. That lack of plausibility is nearly a show stopper; so much of the movie relies on a bond of trust between the two of them that’s simply not believable, and without it there’s a cascading effect on the sturdiness of the entire third act.
It’s a shame because what Scorsese does seem to have nailed down here is the milieu and aesthetic notion of early 20th century Osage country. The world he creates is rich with detail and the feeling of history being made like a prevailing wind cutting through the town. It’s not enough in and of itself to have just that sensibility locked down while so much else is rickety, but it feels like almost enough. Had the movie been an hour or so shorter, it might actually have worked.
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