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| TriStar Pictures | Release Date: April 3, 1992 |
Starring:
Fred Dalton Thompson, Fred Ward, Graham Greene, John Trudell, Julius Drum, Sam Shepard, Sarah Brave, Sheila Tousey, Ted Thin Elk, Val Kilmer
Summary:
A young mixed-blood FBI agent (Val Kilmer) is assigned to work with a cynical veteran investigator (Sam Shepard) on a murder on a poverty-stricken Sioux reservation.
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In Thunderheart we get a real visual sense of the reservation, of the beauty of the rolling prairie and the way it is interrupted by deep gorges, but also of the omnipresent rusting automobiles and the subsistence level of some of the housing. We feel that we're really there, and that the people in the story really occupy land they stand on.
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Director Michael Apted's Thunderheart is a fleetly-paced
murder mystery cum conspiracy thriller marred only by an
'inspirational' Hollywood ending at odds with the trajectory of the plot. [3 Apr 1992]
This directness, however, contrasts with an over-complicated script by John Fusco, who sets the action in the aftermath of the 1975 battle at Wounded Knee and the controversial arrest of American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier, accused of killing two FBI agents. But while appreciation may be enhanced by previous knowledge of these events, the story boasts integrity and serves as a forceful indictment of on-going injustice.
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Thunderheart, which concerns tragic in-fighting between factions of the Oglala Sioux, lands with a sound that duplicates the name of the Indian chief who harassed Howdy Doody in less ethnically sensitive times. Thunderthud. The movie is so dramatically stillborn that it may be unfair to single out Val Kilmer, but that is Kilmer's name atop an acting lineup that includes Sam Shepard, Fred Ward and Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves). [3 Apr 1992, p.8D]
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