Watched on Saturday March 16, 2024.

Watched on Friday March 8, 2024.

Watched on Saturday March 9, 2024.

Watched on Friday February 16, 2024.

Watched on Saturday January 13, 2024.

Watched on Sunday January 7, 2024.

Watched on Sunday January 7, 2024.

If it was just a basic, forgettable late 80s action movie, one of those movies you'd find on Fox during a slow weekend afternoon when they needed to fill time it'd be fine. But they added Lou Diamond Phillips and an Indigenous plot to make it worse. Floyd Red Crow Westerman is good in a bit part.

The 1973 version is infinitely better. Denzel and John Travolta do not equal Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw. Plus the entire premise of the film works much better in the pre-Internet New York. 

Pros:

- Denzel 
- James Gandolfini 

Cons:

- 2000s action thriller slo-mo 
- 2000s action thriller music
- Robert Shaw hijacked a subway in 1973 and did the crossword. Travolta is just whiny looking at stocks
- The 1973 ending was better than the book’s. This one was much dumber by comparison.

The book doesn’t hold up, this does.

Two stars for the New York imagery, zero for literally everything else.

Both the movie (and the book, albeit to a lesser degree) both want to treat the historical events as a sensational murder mystery that operates in this specific period of the 1920s tied to oil. The murders were part of a much larger process to strip indigenous peoples of land and resources, much of it not tied to events like a house blowing up. 

- Lily Gladstone deserves Best Actress
- Jason Isbell was a good kind of creepy and he would have honestly made a better Ernest than Leo. 
- Lithgow versus Fraser as dueling attorneys was excellent casting

The pop culture references feel a little forced at times and have a weird mix of trying to cater to kids and adults curious about the movie. But the animation style is excellent and the movie overall is better than any of the recent versions by a long stretch.