Formulaic murder mystery set against the "exotic" backdrop of the Oglala Sioux reservation in the Badlands, and drawing on the documentary realities (circa the 1970s) of Indian infighting and FBI intervention. We quickly recognize that we are being set up to sneer in general at the white man's -- and in particular at a three-quarters white man's and one-quarter red man's -- stunted and complacent rationality and to kneel in reverence at the altar of Indian mysticism: evanescent ghosts, feats of clairvoyance, dream visions. All this, needless to add, is a formula also. Director Michael Apted, too serious-minded to stir up much in the way of melodramatic thrills, has not here simply pounded out a piece of hackwork, but it might have been better if he had. He, or somebody else. The documentary shots of Third World-ish squalor around the reservation do not slow things down excessively -- blurry tracking shots from car windows, sort of like a hit-and-run Walker Evans. But in the effort to freshen the formula(s) -- murder mystery and/or reverential mysticism -- the filmmakers keep on pausing to dispense educational lessons or, worse, outright rosy propaganda. This sort of business not only gets in the way of the advancing plot, but to a large extent takes its place, as though information relieved the filmmakers of the need for ingenuity. Val Kilmer, Sam Shepard, Graham Greene. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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