This is a nonfiction directed and produced by Martin Scorsese. Eric Roth wrote the screenplay based on the nonfiction book of the same name by David Grann.
In America's 1920s, members of the Osage tribe died one after another: some died from bullet wounds and explosions, some died from poisoning and knife wounds. This is in the early days of the FBI which then was called Bureau of Investigation.
John Edgar Hoover, the first Director of the FBI, dispatched Tom White to head the investigation of the mysterious, Osage murders.
The Osage woman Mollie Burkhart is more or less the central character in the story; her people began to die, under mysterious circumstances, one after another. The murderers targeted the Osage people for their riches and oil income.
"In the early 1870s, the Osage had been driven from their lands in Kansas onto a rocky, presumably worthless reservation in northeastern Oklahoma, only to discover, decades later, that this land was sitting above some of the largest oil deposits in the United States," wrote David Grann, in the opening part of the book.
Once poor, the Osage would go on to become the wealthiest people per capita in the world.
William Hale, the mastermind, is a sick, rotten animal, rotten to the core. Hale presented himself as a savior figure to the Osage community with ulterior motive. While Tom White, a more honest character, did a good job as the lead investigator of the Bureau of Investigation. Tom White named and damned William Hale as the mastermind.
Hale's nephew Ernest Burkhart married an Osage woman; this close proximity perhaps granted Hale an easy access to privileged information on the victims all the more, beyond and above Hale's status in the society as the man of law and order.
A dead body of someone's loved one surfaced in a secluded area; another person became worse when treated by the doctor and got better after staying away from the doctor; the criminals stabbed a good person to death as the person tried to report the crime to the outside world; a bomb exploded and engulfed a house along with the victims. Hale masterminded such a large-scale operation against the people he managed to fool.
What should you do just in case you felt that the people around you started disappearing and that you're the next target? If you happen to be a target in such a life threatening situation, you should flee from East-to-westward direction provided that you have no other better plan (this direction is considered the Lord's way of moving). The opposite direction, that is West to East, is considered a bad idea, according to some people (see 45 to 46 mins in timeline, no matter where you live. Here's the thing: in the Bible as well as in the world history, bad things, such as military loses, happen to people if they go from West to East; however, good things, such as military victories, are associate with people that go from East to West. In case you have no other better plan, you want to keep this in mind. I hope and pray that nobody has to be in a situation of feeling that one is being tracked by unknown forces.
I read the book and found it well-researched. The author David Grann said in an interview that he took more time researching the story than he initially thought, with the research ending up taking him five long years.
Filming:
On May 13, De Niro reportedly suffered a quadriceps muscle leg injury off-set; production was not delayed, however, as De Niro's scenes will be filmed in June 2021. I can't wait to see this story on the screen.
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