Unfortunately, length and pacing weren't the only issues with the film either. There were times when some of the editing felt shoddy and didn't quite mesh with the way the rest of the film was laid out, like Bale's lament in the desert and the short sequence where the convoy of horses cross the river. The character arcs for both Pike and Bale weren't gradual enough and come across like a flip of a light switch, and the Native Americans are thinly drawn, as they so often are. The Indian characters aren't caricatures, per se, but they're also not given much to do either, particularly Studi, and they seem almost like an afterthought in a film that's more or less about them and their mistreatment.

That said, there are some redeemable qualities to this unfalteringly dismal film. For starters, the cinematography is gorgeously photographed, and the tranquil beauty of the exteriors directly contrast with the gloomy mood and bleak narrative in fairly interesting ways. We get a lot of wide exteriors that swallow our characters up in the scenery and remind us how small they are in comparison to the dangers that lie literally everywhere. It's clear that the westerns of John Ford, specifically The Searchers and Stagecoach, heavily influenced the visual aesthetic of the film. This is apparent in everything from the wide exteriors to the many instances of the classic door shot. Hostiles leans, however, a little too excessively on the visuals of the other westerns that came before it, that it forgets to show us anything new, which was kind of a let down.