Deadline‘s Michael Fleming is authoritatively reporting that Martin Scorsese‘s Killers of the Flower Moon is not three hours and 54 minutes, which is what the Movie Database had or reported on or about 4.14, but three hours and 26 minutes. Nearly a full half-hour shorter — not so bad!

Here’s Jordan Ruimy’s rundown of the various reported running times over the last several weeks.

It is my considered belief, supported by many years of arduous viewing, that Guy Ritchie is a highly skilled but superficial-minded hack. I’m not using the term “soulless whore,” but if someone were to accuse Ritchie of same I wouldn’t argue strenuously against this. And yet…

In the view of Variety‘s Owen Gleiberman, The Covenant (MGM, 4.21) is proof that “against all odds, Guy Ritchie has become one of the best directors working.”

This Afghanistan war thriller “isn’t another Ritchie underworld caper,” Gleiberman claims. “He has put his confectionary flamboyance on hold. [For] The Covenant unveils something new: Ritchie the contempo classicist. We’re seeing a born-again filmmaker.

“The Covenant is a superbly crafted drama, [and] yet the most eyebrow-raising aspect of the movie, in light of Ritchie’s career, is the bone-deep humanity that animates the story. This is a war film dotted with heroism but dunked in despair.

“As a rescue thriller, it’s tinglingly suspenseful and real. What gives the film its power is the way that its climactic final act grows out of an organic metaphor for the flawed vision of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. We came in with the best of intentions, but got too lost in the quagmire to follow through on our promise to the Afghan people. And so we stranded them.

“In The Covenant, Ritchie tells a story of two men, but he’s really giving this war that never succeeded a kind of closure. He uses the power of movies to coax out the heart that fueled our actions, and that made our loss so hard to bear.”

Despite what happened in Chicago’s Loop district last weekend, which was basically sporadic violent chaos by roving mobs of urban youths, nobody’s allowed to sound too angry or draconian. Chicago Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson warned against demonizing the hordes who smashed car and store windows, beat people up, started bonfires, clashed with cops, etc.

“In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend,” Johnson said. “It is unacceptable and has no place in our city, [but] it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”

Translation: “Many non-white Chicago kids have been leading difficult lives and are understandably hot-tempered and economically frustrated, so we don’t want to racially simplify matters if they trash the Loop district and bust a few heads. We can’t tolerate this kind of thing, but at the same time we need to try and turn the other cheek because decades of political white power structure oppression have had an unfortunate effect.”

Chicago Tribune editorial: “Mr. Mayor-elect, this is not going to work.”

Everyone understands that they’re not allowed to say anything that even vaguely resembles alarmist sentiments heard in early April of 2010 after incidents of “wilding” in Times Square, and certainly nothing that resembles what Orange Plague and other riled-up, short-tempered Manhattanites said about the Central Park Five incident (and the wilding that preceded it) in 1989.