Thunderheart Review
The DVD transfer is very good to excellent.
In a movie that could have become an incoherent, confused mix of multiple storylines, screenwriter John Fusco and director Michael Apted have brilliantly assembled a provoctive film which never fails to keep the viewer thoroughly involved. The story begins with an FBI agent sent to North Dakota to help solve a murder on an Indian reservation. Val Kilmer is the agent whose Sioux heritage is the motivation for the assignment. His partner, Agent Frank Coutelle (Sam Shepard), seems to be all business. The conflict on the reservation seems to be a political situation. The murder of an Indian involved with ARM (Aboriginal Rights Movement) seems to be just another case of politics carried to the extreme.
As the story unfolds, we see Agent Ray Levoi (Kilmer) being pulled into a deeper look at his own life and heritage through an old Indian medicine man played by Granpa Sam Reaches. The FBI begins to look a little less like the protectors and more like a bureaucratic agency willing to sweep the truth away in the name of expediency. Look for a superb performance from Graham Greene (as Walter Crow Horse) as a Reseveration policeman trying to get at the truth but struggling with the Feds and the Indian group aligned with them at every turn. The blending of Indian Religion into the story is skillfuly done so as not to overwhelm the movie with its influence. That religion is given just the right impact to motivate the protagonist in his personal search for himself. The assemble cast is perfect.
If you haven't seen this film, do yourselves a favor and watch it. I promise you won't be disappointed.
Highly recommended for teens and up, especially those who like: Crime dramas, journeys of personal discovery, and a symphatic look at the American Indian in modern America. Easily 5 stars.
Thunderheart Overview
A young FBI agent is sent to the Souix reservation to investigate a murder. He finds his own Indian heritage while solving the mystery.
Thunderheart Specifications
Tough but moving, Thunderheart is an unusual story about an arrogant FBI agent (Val Kilmer) who participates in a federal investigation of a murder on an Oglala Sioux reservation. Kilmer's character is part Sioux himself, a detail that leaves him cold as he sets about pushing his way through the community to find facts on the case. In time, however, he begins to feel an ethnic tug and grows increasingly sympathetic to the locals and hostile toward his fellow G-men, much to the dismay of his agency mentor (Sam Shepard). The script is based on real events that occurred on the Pine Ridge Reservation in 1975 in South Dakota (involving an armed standoff between Indian activists and the FBI, an event that prompted Thunderheart director Michael Apted to make a companion documentary, Incident at Oglala). The conclusion of Thunderheart feels like politically charged whimsy, but the real strength of the film is Kilmer's outstanding performance as a man in transformation. Apted's clear-eyed depiction of the Sioux's spiritual and cultural continuity with the past has none of the cloying romanticism of other films about Indians. Produced by Robert De Niro. --Tom Keogh
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