thunderheart

i do agree that the united states needs to feel at least a pang of guilt with the way that its history has treated the native american, after all i have been to a few reservations and seen the incredible poverty and the sham tacky casino culture that seems to have overrun them, but is this kind of lip service hollywood style enough? maybe, i am being unnecessarily hard. after all it was just a movie and it did seem to have its heart in the right place. but why make the very blonde val kilmer the central character who plays a half indian cop sent to a reservation to investigate a murder and who then learns to ‘listen to the wind’ or ‘go to the source’ to discover a racket to mine uranium from reservation lands. its typical fare; sweet old indian men and women do sweet indian things and speak in vague nothings about mystical lands are threatened by big business and corrupt cops. Based on a true story, I am told. If I had to honest about it I would say it was a bad film I watched completely because it was cliché ridden from beginning to the end (and I was in the mood a few good cliches); and because I gave it a few brownie points for playing the liberal card so sincerely and so calculatingly...

oh.. and the title is val kilmers great ancestors name whom he sees in a vision running away after doing a ghost dance from evil horse riding colonisers bent on shooting him in the back.