Mollie’s sister Anna ( Cara Jade Myers), who is married to Ernest’s brother Bryan ( Scott Shepherd), is found shot by a creek on the same day that another Osage Nation man is shot. The two marry just before Mollie’s family and other members of the Osage population are murdered one after another.

Ernest starts as a driver in the area for the wealthy Osage, which leads him to Mollie ( Lily Gladstone). Hale senses someone easily manipulated in his nephew Ernest, who has returned home from the war, ready to be a good soldier for a new cause. De Niro gives one of the best performances of his career as a man who prefers to be called 'King,' rivetingly capturing the kind of sociopath who can sell murder with a smile. He was able to play the political games that made him an ally to both the Osage and the white people in the area while working behind the scenes to line his pockets. While just a cattle baron himself, Hale was a kingmaker in the Osage region.

Naturally, the people who had claimed a country they never owned wanted a piece of this action, leading to a battle for land in the region, a conflict that turned a man named William King Hale ( Robert De Niro) into a legend. After being pushed off their property to the presumed wasteland of Oklahoma around the turn of the last century, the Osage Nation was stunned to find itself the recipient of the earthly gift of oil, making them the wealthiest group of people in the country per capita relatively overnight.

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