I would actually argue the FBI are not the heroes of the film! I think the purpose of the radio show — which ends up making fun of the whole situation as if it wasn’t horribly painful and traumatizing — was to demonstrate that mainstream American history treats the genocide of Native Americans as a spectacle, or a blip. The show is totally trivializing and disrespectful, but that actually nails the way that white Americans fail to deliver justice to native Americans. Scorsese taking the stage to talk about the eventual exoneration of Hale (likely due to his wealth/whiteness/political connections), Ernest and Byron’s respective releases from prison, and the omission of Mollie’s family’s murders from her obituary demonstrates the total failure of the state/mainstream political establishment (eg., the FBI) to actually pursue meaningful justice on behalf of the Osage. We WANT the FBI to be the hero/savior so badly that the narrative part of the film ends the way it does, but in the true crime retelling years in the future, we learn that there were no real heroes for the Osage.
I would actually argue the FBI are not the heroes of the film! I think the purpose of the radio show — which ends up making fun of the whole situation as if it wasn’t horribly painful and traumatizing — was to demonstrate that mainstream American history treats the genocide of Native Americans as a spectacle, or a blip. The show is totally trivializing and disrespectful, but that actually nails the way that white Americans fail to deliver justice to native Americans. Scorsese taking the stage to talk about the eventual exoneration of Hale (likely due to his wealth/whiteness/political connections), Ernest and Byron’s respective releases from prison, and the omission of Mollie’s family’s murders from her obituary demonstrates the total failure of the state/mainstream political establishment (eg., the FBI) to actually pursue meaningful justice on behalf of the Osage. We WANT the FBI to be the hero/savior so badly that the narrative part of the film ends the way it does, but in the true crime retelling years in the future, we learn that there were no real heroes for the Osage.