PG-13, 139 min.
Director: Arthur Penn
Writers: Calder Willingham,
Thomas Berger (novel)
Starring: Dustin Hoffman,
Faye Dunaway, Chief Dan George, Martin Balsam, Richard Mulligan, Jeff Corey,
Amy Eccles, Kelly Jean Peters, Carol Androsky, Robert Little Star, Cal Bellini,
Ruben Moreno, Steve Shemayne, William Hickey
On the heels of his
revolutionary films “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Alice’s Restaurant”, director
Arthur Penn turned his scope on Hollywood for his next assassination. His
target was the depiction of the American Indian by motion pictures and
television since the days when John Huston made John Wayne into a star. His
star to expose the Hollywood lie of the way of the Indians was a 5’5” Jew who
had become a star by playing a nothing and a rat.
Dustin Hoffman’s character
here isn’t much better than those in “The Graduate” or “Midnight Cowboy”. He’s
a push over who becomes whatever anyone around him wants him to be, which I
think is part of the joke Penn is playing on Hollywood. These are the people
that would define our Native Americans, people who expect anyone to be whoever
they want them to be, whoever its convenient for them to be. In the case of
Native Americans, Hollywood needed them to be The Enemy. The enemy of white
man, the enemy of progress, the enemy of peace. When in reality our Native
Americans were usually the opposites of these things.
It is the Indians who take
in an orphaned brother and sister. The sister leaves, but the boy is raised as
an Indian, accepted as one of them. When he finds his sister again later, she
turns him into an outlaw, a gunslinger for hire. Lucky for him, he doesn’t
really have the stomach for killing, despite becoming friends with Wild Bill
Hickok. He eventually finds himself back with the Indians after becoming a
Christian in a house of sin, hustling with a medicine trader, hitting rock
bottom at the bottom of a bottle, trying his hand at a legitimate trade, and
heading west on the advice of General Custer. Custer is portrayed by Richard
Mulligan as a vain, know-it-all who is treated like royalty despite the fact
that most of his advice to his subjects is bad.
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