Kevin Costner's three-hour-and-one-minute Western, his first directorial effort, readily brings to mind Sam Fuller's Run of the Arrow, which likewise tells of a Civil War veteran -- more interestingly, a die-hard Confederate -- who attempts to find a new home, a new nation, among the Sioux. There are several points in common between them, not least a comely maid for romantic interest, but the newer movie diverges sharply from the older one on the matter of a leopard's ability to change its spots. Run suggested that a few spots would always be inerasable no matter how badly a leopard wanted to become a lion; Dances prefers to think that wanting's enough. The frictionlessness, the whole-souled acceptance, with which the hero here glides into the Sioux community is part of the problem of the movie: lack of dramatic conflict, lack of dramatic focus. True, the crossing of cultural barriers is slow work, and this certainly contributes to the movie's length. But simple impatience is not a very effective narrative tool. And given the lack of internal conflict, the presence of an active antagonist might have been a help. None is in evidence. Some "bad" Indians -- Pawnee -- show up early but then stay away until late. Still worse than bad Indians, and not just because slower to show up, are the white men of the U.S. Army, who allow Costner to give full range to the masochistic impulses glimpsed previously in Revenge. What was there a mere streak has been widened here to maximum crucifixion arm-span. And dramatic conflict goes suddenly and stomach-lurchingly from insufficient to mawkishly excessive. Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene. (1990) — Duncan Shepherd
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