Critics Heap Praise On Martin Scorsese's Latest In The Killers Of The Flower Moon Trailer

You're never going to believe it, but it looks like Martin Scorsese made another great film. The legendary director's latest, "Killers of the Flower Moon," premiered to critical raves earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival, with Lex Briscuso heralding it as "a cautionary masterpiece on the insidiousness of white men" in her review for /Film. That's more or less the same vibe as the film's new trailer, which focuses on the ... well, let's call it the complicated relationship between the film's protagonist, Leonardo DiCaprio's Ernest Burkhart, his Indigenous American wife Mollie (Lily Gladstone), and Ernest's uncle William Hale (Robert De Niro), a white-haired fellow with a twinkle in his eye but more than a hint of maliciousness in his manner.

With the film's theatrical release coming up quickly next month, Paramount (which joined forces with Apple to produce Scorsese's costly epic tale of love, greed, and murder) has released a new trailer — one that highlights the film's majestic visuals while at the same time incorporating plenty of glowing critic pull-quotes to get the hype machine running at full speed. The official synopsis reads:

At the turn of the 20th century, oil brought a fortune to the Osage Nation, who became some of the richest people in the world overnight. The wealth of these Native Americans immediately attracted white interlopers, who manipulated, extorted, and stole as much Osage money as they could before resorting to murder. Based on a true story and told through the improbable romance of Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Mollie Kyle (Lily Gladstone), "Killers of the Flower Moon" is an epic western crime saga, where real love crosses paths with unspeakable betrayal.

Check out the new trailer below!

"Killers of the Flower Moon" is based on David Grann's best-selling non-fiction book of the same name, with Scorsese directing in addition to co-writing the script with Eric Roth ("A Star is Born," "Dune"). That makes it only the second film (after "Silence") Scorsese has officially had a hand in writing over the last 25 years. "After a certain point, I realized I was making a movie about all the white guys," Scorsese told Time recently. "Meaning I was taking the approach from the outside in, which concerned me." This, combined with his meeting with the Osage Nation, led Scorsese and his crew to reframe the narrative around Ernest and Mollie's love story. Amusingly, Scorsese also confirmed DiCaprio improvised Ernest's flirtatious response to Mollie in the latest trailer ("I don't know what you said, but it must've been Indian for handsome devil").

Among those joining DiCaprio, De Niro, and Gladstone in the cast are Jesse Plemons, Tantoo Cardinal, John Lithgow, and Brendan Fraser, providing us with an ample bounty of illustrious character actors in cowboy hats. That alone would've made "Killers of the Flower Moon" a must-see when it opens in theaters on October 20, 2023, prior to streaming on Apple TV+ sometime after.