Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (2017)
Killers of the Flower Moon directed by Martin Scorsese (2023)
This is the true story about the killing of countless Osage people who, after oil was found on their land, became the richest people in America per capita. We witness the corruption and abuse, and see investigators from the up and coming FBI come in to solve the murders.
Book Review
This is a well-researched book which can be quite riveting at times. It reads as a mystery story, turned dramatic court trial. I will say that last section of the book Grann inserts himself into the story as he shares his findings, and this section seemed to slow the story down a bit. The information he shares is crucial to the story, and I like that she shares his conversation with the Osage nearly 100 years after these events, but it seems like it could have been told to us in a way that flowed better.
For me, the gold standard when it comes to creative nonfiction books, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot. Both are full of so much information and have a lot of names, but Skloot gave us the information in a way that was easy to take in and I was able to keep all of the people and information in line. Grann didn’t paint as vivid a story with his book. Regardless, I would still recommend the book. It is so heartbreaking, and I think it is good we are shining a light on this tragic history.
Movie Review
I gave this movie four out of five stars, which is definitely a high rating. To be honest though, I went into this with incredibly high expectations and was anticipating a five-star movie, so it wasn’t quite what I wanted, but nonetheless I still loved it. It is a heavy story, plus the length also makes it intense. It is such an overwhelming movie, as you see what is happening to the Osage people. There are some moments of humor (like when De Niro spanks Di Caprio with a paddle) but overall, it is just so sad and upsetting.
Of course, the performances are amazing, and I will be getting into the actors a bit later in the video.
Even though it is nearly three and a half hours, it flew by. I don’t know if watching it at home would have been the same, but in the theater, it was so immersive and I was never bored. I didn’t even use the bathroom the whole time because I didn’t want to miss anything-every scene felt crucial.
It also stays faithful to the true story for the most part and due to its run time, they didn’t have to cut many details. However, there are some changes that I will be getting into in the spoiler section of the video.
But for now, I will simply say you should go see this movie in theaters!!
From here on out there will be spoilers for the book and movie!
The Osage and oil
To start, I will share some excerpts that explain why the Osage became so rich. “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.”
“In 1897, oil was discovered on the Osage Reservation..or present-day Osage County, Oklahoma. The U.S. Department of the Interior managed leases for oil exploration and production on land owned by the Osage Nation through the Bureau of Indian Affairs and later managed royalties, paying individual allottees. As part of the process of preparing Oklahoma for statehood, the federal government allotted 657 acres to each Osage on the tribal rolls in 1907. Thereafter, they and their legal heirs, whether Osage or not, had headrights to royalties in oil production, based on their allotments of lands. The headrights could be inherited by legal heirs, including non-Osage. The tribe held the mineral rights communally and paid its members by a percentage related to their holdings.
By 1920, the market for oil had grown dramatically and brought much wealth to the Osage. In 1923 alone “the tribe took in more than thirty million dollars, the equivalent today of more than four hundred million dollars.””
The government didn’t think full blood Osage people could be trusted with all of that money though, so they were appointed white guardians who oversaw their spending. If a full Osage woman was married to a white man, he would be her guardian.
“In practice, the decision to appoint a guardian—to render an American Indian, in effect, a half citizen—was nearly always based on the quantum of Indian blood in the property holder, or what a state supreme court justice referred to as “racial weakness.” A full-blooded American Indian was invariably appointed a guardian, whereas a mixed-blood person rarely was. John Palmer, the part-Sioux orphan who had been adopted by an Osage family and who played such an instrumental role in preserving the tribe’s mineral rights, pleaded to members of Congress, “Let not that quantum of white blood or Indian determine the amount that you take over from the members of this tribe. It matters not about the quantum of Indian blood. You gentlemen do not deal with things of that kind.”’
Ernest and Mollie
The movie begins with the Osage people and the oil, then moves onto Ernest Burkhart. In the movie he is returning from war (WW1?) and is going to stay with his Uncle William Hale who is called “King of Osage County”; he is very wealthy an respected in the community. As they talk, right away Hale is talking to Ernest how there is so much money here and telling him about the headrights. We later see Ernest in town and another white guy introduces Ernest to his wife, and brags that she is full Osage. It comes across like him being proud of it because it means he has a rich wife. Even though Ernest himself becomes a white man who marries an Osage woman, the white spouses are kind of in different groups. There are the white men like Ernest who through his affiliation with Hale is respected, but you have other white men who are more open about being with an Osage woman for her money and they just are lazy and stir up trouble and spend money like crazy. Really though, basically all of them are exploiting the Osage people, some are just more devious whereas others are more outright.
Anyway, in the book (and the true story) Ernest didn’t serve in a war. In the book it reads, “Growing up in Texas, the son of a poor cotton farmer, he’d been enchanted by tales of the Osage Hills—that vestige of the American frontier where cowboys and Indians were said to still roam. In 1912, at nineteen, he’d packed a bag, like Huck Finn lighting out for the Territory, and gone to live with his uncle…”
In the movie and real life, Ernest becomes a chauffeur and this is how he meets Mollie because he drivers her around. We see him hanging out with a bad crowd though and even robbing some Osage people for their jewels, then gambling them away. In the book it mentions he hung out with shady people, but in the end, he and Mollie fell in love.
“Born a speaker of Osage, Mollie had learned some English in school; nevertheless, Ernest studied her native language until he could talk with her in it. She suffered from diabetes, and he cared for her when her joints ached and her stomach burned with hunger. After he heard that another man had affections for her, he muttered that he couldn’t live without her.”
In the beginning of the movie, Hale is asking Ernest what kind of women he likes, and he says he likes them all. Then, as Ernest is around longer, Hale is trying to get him to marry Mollie clearly for her headrights. Ernest seems to genuinely like her and really fall for her. At one point she says something about how he likes her money and he says, well yeah, I do love money. Later, she is talking with her sisters about him and one says ‘he just wants you for your money’ and she says, ‘of course that’s part of it. They all want us for money.’ But another says that his uncle is already rich, so he must not be as interested in her money as he is in her.
All of these conversation-Ernest and Hale at the start, Ernest and Mollie, Mollie and her sisters-I don’t think any of them are based on facts but rather the script writer kind of speculating on what was happening behind closed doors.
Mollie and her sisters
It is interesting that all of the sisters aside from Anna, married white men. In the movie, we get another scene that isn’t in the book where Lizzie Q, the mother, is expressing her disappointment in Mollie and the others for marrying white men. The movie also starts with Osage leaders mourning the fact that the younger generation will become assimilated in white culture. This isn’t really explored further in book or movie, and I think to get an honest look into this topic, the book and movie would have needed to be made or written by someone who was from Osage decent.
William Hale
In the movie, Hale’s people, such as Ernest, call him King. In real life, his middle name was actually King. Of Hale, Ernest said, “He was not the kind of a man to ask you to do something—he told you.”
Hale was in his 40’s during the 1920’s when the events take place, but De Niro is 80, so he really is too old for the role. Though it is cool to see a Scorsese movie with both Di Caprio and De Niro. Scorsese has worked with both numerous times, and the two of them have been in films together (This Boy’s Life has been on my book vs movie list for years but I haven’t gotten around to it!), but this movie is the first time all three are together!
Anyway, Hale is clearly a domineering person and very manipulative. He is respected by the town, and he also thinks very highly of himself; it seems like he almost believes the lies he tells. We do see how Ernest was easily controlled by Hale and was just easily manipulated and cowardly while Hale was the mastermind. Like I legit think Hale was a psychopath, but that is just my unprofessional opinion on a man I have never met and who isn’t even alive anymore so take that as you will. They are both so devious though and so monsterous.
In the book we read, “There was one legal way, though, that someone could still obtain a headright: inheritance. As White [the detective] examined probate records for many of the murder victims, it was evident that with each successive death more and more headrights were being directed into the hands of one person—Mollie Burkhart. And it just so happened that she was married to Hale’s nephew Ernest, a man who, as an agent wrote in a report, “is absolutely controlled by Hale.”
Not a whodunit
Scorsese has said this movie isn’t a “whodunit”, but rather a “who didn’t do it.” We the audience see right from the start what is going on, and how many people are involved, basically all of whom are white. You have Blackie who is an Osage man, but I think he is the only nonwhite person who we know of that was part of the whole thing. All of the of the townspeople seem corrupt in one way or another. They also show how people overcharge Osage people like crazy because they know they have the money. So, they were being taken advantage of in countless ways. The movie shows this when Ernest is paying for Anna’s funeral and is outraged at the crazy price.
The book was different because we are told about the murders, then the story shifts to years later when Tom White shows up to investigate. Through his findings, the subsequent trial, the reader finds out the truth. In the book, learning that Ernest was involved was a huge surprise and such a heartbreaking blow.
The movie script was originally written as a detective mystery, with Di Caprio playing White. However, DiCaprio requested it be redone so that he could play Ernest and that totally changed the genre of the film.
After discussing this with my sisters, whom I saw the movie with, I think it is good that the audience knew all along what was happening. We don’t get the shock of realizing he was in on it, but because we aren’t trying to figure out the mystery throughout the movie, we are instead able to focus on the story itself. The mystery aspect would have distracted too much. We also notice all the more how horrible Hale is and Ernest, as they say to people’s faces how much they love and care about them. Then the next minute they are behind the persons back plotting to kill beloved family members. The scene with Henry Roan was also just so terrible as he is telling doctors and Hale that he is suicidal and depressed, and the doctors tell him alcohol will fix it. Then Hale takes out life insurance on him so he can benefit from Roan’s death-something that happened in real life and we see in the movie.
Mollie
I do wish we would have seen more of Mollie in the movie. For like an hour and a half, she is sick and isn’t as present. Considering the movie is about Osage people being killed and what Mollie in particular went though-her sisters and their spouses were amongst those killed, and to then realize it was your husband whom you loved and trusted would be beyond devasting. Of course, we get that from her, and Lily Gladstone is fantastic, but I just wish we saw even more of her and not as much of Ernest.
We get sections in the movie where we hear her thoughts, but it only happens twice and even though the words are powerful, it seems kind of random.
When White spoke to Mollie in real life, we read,
He asked her if Ernest had ever told her anything about Hale’s plot. She said, “He never told me anything about it.” All she wanted, she said, was for the men who did this to her family to be punished. “It makes no difference who they are?” the attorney asked. “No,” she said adamantly. But she couldn’t, wouldn’t, believe that Ernest had been involved in such a plot. Later, a writer quoted her saying, “My husband is a good man, a kind man. He wouldn’t have done anything like that. And he wouldn’t hurt anyone else, and he wouldn’t ever hurt me.”
In the end of book and movie, Mollie divorces Ernest. In the movie, Ernest poisoning her with her insulin shots is a huge part of the story. Even after he has testified to his involvement with past murders, he still will not admit to her that he was poisoning her.
Of this, the book reads, “There are few records, at least authoritative ones, of Mollie’s existence during this period [after the death of Rita and Bill]. No record of how she felt when agents from the Bureau of Investigation…finally arrived in town. No record of what she thought of physicians like the Shoun brothers, who were constantly coming and going, injecting her with what was said to be a new miracle drug: insulin. It was as if, after being forced to play a tragic hand, she’d dealt herself out of history. Then, in late 1925, the local priest received a secret message from Mollie. Her life, she said, was in danger. An agent from the Office of Indian Affairs soon picked up another report: Mollie wasn’t dying of diabetes at all; she, too, was being poisoned.”
The “insulin” the Shoun doctors were giving Mollie was poison in real life, and I’m sure Ernest knew. But it just wasn’t as clear in the book whereas him being the one giving her the poison is a big part of the film.
Tom White and the FBI
As you can tell by the full book title, it deals a lot with the early days of private investigators and then what would be later called the FBI. We see White coming in with his team of undercover agents as they find the truth of the murders, but we don’t see Tom as a person or learn about the organizing of the FBI.
This was interesting enough in the book, but I was fine with the movie omitting that side of the story.
The movie shows how before White showed up, the Osage people had to spend their own money to get investigators to look into the killings. Citizens shouldn’t have to pay to have murders investigated, but local authorities didn’t care, plus I’m sure most of them were in the pocket of William Hale.
Something the movie doesn’t show is that some PI’s were bribed by Hale. In the movie we just see one investigator who is apparently killed, or at least beat up, in order to prevent him from looking into it more.
The trial and after
After White shows up, he arrests Hale and Ernest and others are also brought in. Initially, Ernest gave in and told White he would testify against Hale. When the day came, Hale’s lawyer demanded to speak with Ernest and Ernest agreed. They then went to a room and after 20 minutes passed and they were still in there, they were told to come out and Ernest then said he wouldn’t testify.
We see this in the movie, but the lawyer and a large group from the town are all in a room later that evening (not right there during the trial) and together they convince him not to testify and even get him to lie saying White and his men beat him and coerced him into lying about Hale.
In both, he and Mollie’s youngest daughter passes away at this time. It is her death shakes Ernest up and he decides he can’t continue lying and says he will confess. In the movie, we were always seeing Mollie devastated by a loved one dying. Here, Ernest for the first time feels what he has been causing Mollie to feel for years.
In the book we read,
[He] found Burkhart in his cell pacing restlessly. He had deep circles around his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept for days. “I’m through lying, judge,” Burkhart said, the words rushing out of him. “I don’t want to go on with this trial any longer.” “Being with the prosecution, I’m in no position to advise you,” Leahy said. “Why don’t you tell your lawyers?” “I can’t tell them,” Burkhart said. Leahy looked at Burkhart, not sure if the impending confession was yet another trick. But Burkhart looked sincere. The death of his daughter, the haunting face of his wife each day at the trial, the realization that the evidence against him was piling up—it was too much to withstand. “I’m absolutely helpless,” Burkhart said.
In the end, both Hale and Ernest went to prison however both were pardoned years later.
Margie [Ernest’s granddaughter] said that after Ernest got out, he robbed an Osage home and was sent back to prison. In 1947, while Ernest was still in jail, Hale was released, having served twenty years at Leavenworth. Parole board officials maintained that their ruling was based on the grounds of Hale’s advanced age—he was seventy-two—and his record as a good prisoner. An Osage leader said that Hale “should have been hanged for his crimes,” and members of the tribe were convinced that the board’s decision was the last vestige of Hale’s political influence. He was forbidden to set foot again in Oklahoma, but according to relatives he once visited them and said, “If that damn Ernest had kept his mouth shut we’d be rich today.”
Once Ernest was on parole yet again, he moved to Osage County and lived in a “mice infested” trailer with his brother who had also been involved. His granddaughter met him and said, “When I met Ernest, I had just become a teenager,” Margie recalled. “I was very surprised he looked so grandfatherly. He was very slight with graying hair; his eyes looked so kind. He wasn’t rough even after all those years in prison. And I couldn’t fathom that this man had done all that…”
Ernest movie vs book
The movie shows what a bad person Ernest is, and how he was cowardly and just so devious and they took advantage of this whole group of people who trusted them. The way he could comfort Mollie as she grieved the murder of multiple sisters, all the while, he had been involved! Ugh what a disgusting person. So we see that in the movie, and as said, they added the details about him poisoning her while just further how dislikeable he is.
Something the movie changes though, is that the night Ernest knew the house of Rita and Bill Smith was going to be blown up, in real life HE WAS GOING TO HAVE MOLLIE NAD THEIR KIDS SPEND THE NIGHT. The only reason they didn’t, was because their son, Cowboy, had an earache and so they stayed home and therefore lived.
The movie shows him being worried about her when she is out, and saying he wants her and the kids staying in. I think the movie knew that him allowing Mollie and his own kids to be killed in the explosion would have just made him beyond unlikeable and so they don’t have that detail. Not that they make him likeable, but like the scene when he finds out Anna his daughter has died is very heartbreaking. But while watching the movie, in the back of my mind I was thinking how in real life killing his own kids had been part of the original plot. That way the whole inheritance would go to him and not be split amongst him and the kids once Mollie died.
DiCaprio & Gladstone
Di Caprio should have like at least 5 Oscars by now, but he will undoubtably be nominated for every award for his performance. Something I have mentioned before is how impressed I am when someone can play a drunk person well and there is a scene where he had been drinking and then he gets arrested and is interrogated. He was great here and he just thoughout the movie was so versatile.
He is funny and likeable in one scene (in the early days when he was driving Mollie for example), a disgusting manipulative person the next. When he takes the stand, we get a one take scene that is one his face as he answers the prosecutor and again, seeing all of that emotion as he gives one-word answers. Then again, both he and Gladstone were fantastic in the scene when she is asking him what he was giving her and he can’t be honest. DiCaprio said of Gladstone, “There was no reading. Marty just instinctively knew Lily was the one. There was a truthfulness in [her] eyes that he saw even over a computer screen. I’ve never known [Scorsese] meet somebody and then immediately afterwards have this gravitational pull and instinct to say, ‘Let’s not wait another minute.”
And I agree. She gives a stellar performance and her expressions say so much.
The Osage community and the movie
I wanted to share quotes from different Osage people that helped with the movie to get their perspectives. I read an article where Christopher Cote, an Osage man who was a consultant on the film, said after watching the finished product,
“As an Osage, I really wanted this to be from the perspective of Mollie and what her family experienced, but I think it would take an Osage to do that. Martin Scorsese, not being Osage, I think he did a great job representing our people, but this history is being told almost from the perspective of Ernest Burkhart and they kind of give him this conscience and kind of depict that there’s love. But when somebody conspires to murder your entire family, that’s not love. That’s not love, that’s just beyond abuse.”
He goes on to say he doesn’t feel this movie was made for people like him, because for him to watch this was just too painful. Then he says, “I think in the end, the question that you can be left with is: How long will you be complacent with racism? How long will you go along with something and not say something, not speak up, how long will you be complacent? I think that’s because this film isn’t made for an Osage audience, it was made for everybody, not Osage. For those that have been disenfranchised, they can relate, but for other countries that have their acts and their history of oppression, this is an opportunity for them to ask themselves this question of morality, and that’s how I feel about this film.”
While I do think the movie shows that Ernest was a messed-up person, there is a scene when he put some of the poison in his own drink rather than in her medicine. We also have other scenes where he clearly feels guilt, yet he is able to separate his actions with Hale from his actions with Mollie. There is kind of a “love story”, but as the viewer you are just wanting Mollie to get away from Ernest as quickly as possible! I was almost annoyed that when she sees him after getting out the hospital, how she could be so calm. Like why isn’t she angry?? But just because she isn’t flying off the handle doesn’t mean she didn’t feel anger and hurt. She also still had feelings for him to some extent, which is understandable since he was someone, she shared a big part of her life with. Granted, this is all exclusive to the film. We don’t know what conversation the two of them had behind closed doors once the truth started to come out. But I do like how she is represented, and I admired her calm demeanor as she asked Ernest to tell her the truth. When she sees he won’t be honest, rather than accuse him or get mad, she just gets up and leaves without saying a word. Sometimes I think anger in the face of abuse is the strongest, but I am learning more and more that anger may be a step up from helplessness or depression, but it still isn’t the best way.
Other Osage people that were involved in the movie said how closely Scorsese worked with them and that he spent time with them beforehand to get their blessing. Chief Standing Bear said, “The respect that Mr. Scorsese and his team have displayed toward us is more than we hoped for. Such sensitivity is welcome and is a continuation of the respect David Grann showed us.”
Brandy Lemon was another consultant and the article says, “Lemon was appreciative of the filmmakers’ approach. “They listened, that was the biggest thing,” Lemon said. “They actually listened to us. We weren’t considered what people say ‘token Indians.’ They saw us as people.”
Assistant director Addie Roanhorse is quoted in the article which reads,
“I also knew that we would tell the story to people and they wouldn’t believe us,” Roanhorse said. “It took a Martin Scorsese to come along, that sort of powerhouse, to tell the story properly, and how he approached the community and how he worked with all of us, we just felt included.” She hopes the film will inspire the younger Osage generations to tell their history — this chapter included. “My grandparents didn’t talk about it. They feared retaliation. I want my daughter’s generation to speak, tell our stories and be proud of who we are.”
I also watched Native Media Theory’s review on this movie and I really appriciated his insight and highly recommend checking out his video and channel!
The movie’s perspective
To go along with that, I wanted to share a bit more on the choice not to tell this story from the perspective of the Osage people.
I watched Karsten Runquist’s review and I wanted to share a quote about this choice Scorsese made
“This movie is devasting and it wants the viewer to feel that…For some reason true crime has become the thing that you kinda take, you chew it up, and then you spit it out and you never think about it again. Which is crazy! Killers captures something a lot darker. It isn’t just some mystery crime film. It isn’t meant to be disposable the way so much of true crime entertainment aims to be these days. No, it’s a monstrous, harrowing retelling of one of the most violent American tragedies….the film chooses to focus primarily on Ernest and Hale as protagonists, at least moreso than the Osage people. Yet, that isn’t to say it doesn’t successfully capture the perspective of the Osage people at the same time…I don’t think the film would have suffered from telling more of it from the perspective of the Osage community; but I do think by primarily exploring the evil side of the story through Ernest and Hale, it makes everything even more devastating and cynical than it already is. Because you see first-hand the thought process behind this and its just as grim, just as pointless, and just as evil as you thought it would be.”
Let me know in the comments what you think of the decision to film the movie with us knowing all along, or if you are making it more of a detective story would have been more interesting!
I also wanted to mention the way the movie ends is with this radio program in the1930’s where they are telling the story of the Osage murders. This was a unique way to wrap things up rather than just having the text on the screen telling us what happened to everyone. It also shows how this story did become infamous and was turned into radio programs and movies-including the movie The FBI Story which stars Jimmy Stewart! Tom White also had a writer help him to write his own book about the events, but it wasn’t very popular and I’m sure it is a very rare, hard to find book. The FBI also used this case to promote themselves and the 30s radio hour from the movie was one such way they did so.
Referring back to the Runquist review, I want to share another quote that relates to this ending and the true crime aspect, “It ties back into what I was saying about true crime earlier and how trauma is exploited through this genre of entertainment. [The movies ending] addresses that in a really clever and self-aware way. It pays tribute to the people in the story in a really moving way and it ties things back to the present and reality.”
Some may argue that Scorsese is exploiting the Osage by turning this into a movie, but then others will see him respectfully telling their story in a way that hadn’t been done before. I’ve read both sides, and I like Scorsese did an amazing job with this but I’m not an Osage person so I don’t know how valid my opinion on it is.
The expanse of the murders
Something the movie touches on, but doesn’t fully get into is the fact that so many Osage people were killed and the punishment of Hale, Ernest, and their group, did not do justice to the countless people murdered.
Grann discovered so many stories in his research of different Osage people dying in strange ways, some clearly murder, some classified as natural causes but upon further research where murder. The abuse the white guardians inflicted is beyond horrendous. One woman has tuberculosis, but the guardian wouldn’t allow her to get the treatment she needed and so she died of “natural causes” and he received her money.
The book reads, “These cases underscored that the murders of the Osage for their headrights were not the result of a single conspiracy orchestrated by Hale. He might have led the bloodiest and longest killing spree. But there were countless other killings—killings that were not included in official estimates and that, unlike the cases of Lewis or Mollie Burkhart’s family members, were never investigated or even classified as homicides.”
Final thoughts
I know I didn’t really get into the details as much with this one, but there was just so much to talk about! The movie does stay very close to the truth though as said. Henry Roan’s murder meant to look like suicide, but he was shot in the back of the head and the gun wasn’t even left, and Hale have a life insurance policy on him, then trying to pin it on Roy Bunch was true. The events regarding Bill and Rita Smith’s house blowing up was true (aside from the detail of Mollie and the kids supposed to be there). The way Hale had people that had evidence against him be killed by setting them up to rob a place, but then telling the people who were being robbed, which lead to the men with evidence being killed. The part with Ernest getting Blackie to steal his car, the Osage people meeting with Calvin Coolidge, and the white man who was married to an Osage woman being murdered when he went to DC for help earlier.
The movie also talked about the Tulsa massacre-in 1921 white people massacred an affluent black neighborhood- and how it is mentioned multiple times in the movie. The Osage people feared that something similar was happening to them and some moved away. Both situations involve white people being hateful and jealous of the prosperity of people of color, and then brutally murdering them.
I also wanted to mention the scene when Hale is burning some of his property for the insurance money, and then we see the fire through the window where Ernest and Mollie are. Fish Jelly reviews mentioned this scene and how it looks like he and Mollie are in hell. In their video they also talk about the Tulsa/Osage parallels. (they have a fantastic movie review channel btw and you should check them out!)
If you have questions about any other part of the story, comment down below!
Book vs Movie
There are so many ways this story could have been told as a movie, and focusing on Ernest is an interesting perspective; though part of me would still like to see a version that is told through Mollie’s eyes.
Nonetheless, this was a great movie. The more I think about it, the more I like and I think I will up my rating from 4 stars to 4.5. So in the end I am saying the movie wins!
