Mystery Movie Review - ThunderHeart

One of my favorite mystery movies is  the 1992 Thunderheart.  It is based and filmed on the Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, which I have been to and considered the trip life-changing.  I visited the Wounded Knee Memorial which is depicted in the movie.  

What it's about:

When a series of murders stuns a small Native American reservation, the FBI decides to send agent Ray Levoi (Val Kilmer) to aid in the investigation. Ray isn't very experienced, but he is one quarter Sioux, so the FBI in it's wisdom thinks that will make it easier to gather information from the locals. The reservation police officer, Walter Crow Horse (played by Graham Greene) views Ray as an outsider while the tribal elder (Chief Ted Thin Elk) believes him to be the reincarnated spirit of Thunderheart, a Native American hero.  Gradually Ray rejects the intimidating tactics of his fellow agents, who are more interested in maintaining the status quo than solving the murder. The more Ray becomes accepting of his heritage, the locals begin trusting him.  The movie is based on actual Reservation occurrences of the 1970s (more about this in the trivia) which are in a documentary narrated by Robert Redford titled "Incident at Oglala".

Starring:  Val Kilmer (Tombstone), Graham Greene (Dances with Wolves), Sam Shepard, and Sheila Tousey

Director: Michael Apted 

Writer: John Fusco

Rating: R for language and some violent scenes

Rotten Tomatoes 89%

"Stylishly balancing thrills, mysticism and political outrage, Apted's produced his most absorbing movie since Coal Miner's Daughter." David Ansen Newsweek

"Thunderheart adds up to an absorbing and provocative thriller." Malcolm Johnson Hartford Courant

Trivia (much from IMDB)

-- Screenwriter John Fusco lived on the Pine Ridge Reservation for five years researching the script. There, he met Frank Fools Crow, a tribal elder who was the inspiration for Grandpa Sam Reaches.

-- Filming was done with the support of the Oglala Sioux people, who trusted Michael Apted and John Fusco to express their story.

-- The Indian roles are all played by Indians. Ted Thin Elk, who played an honoured Lakota medicine man, is a Lakota elder himself.  Two hundred and fifty Native Americans worked as extras on the movie.

-- The movie features the spiritual life of the American Indian: the purifying rituals of the sweat lodge, the practice of leaving bits of food for the spirits, and the mysterious ghost dance.  It also mentions the Native American belief that some could even shape-shift into an animal. Plus the infamous massacre at Wounded Knee figures symbolically in this film.

-- Filming took place over ten weeks, during which the cast endured temperatures over 100 °F.

-- The movie's activist group is called Aboriginal Rights Movement (ARM) and is based on the actual American Indian Movement (AIM), a group that fights for Native American rights. 

-- Maggie Eagle Bear is based on activist Anna Mae Aquash, who was at one point the highest ranking woman in AIM. She was murdered in 1975 on Pine Ridge Reservation.

-- The commercial television version of the movie hacked roughly 26 minutes of the movie, which angered director Michael Apted so much he insisted his name be removed from the TV version or have a disclaimer shown before the title credits, stating that he disowned that version. After legal litigation, Tristar opted to remove Apted's name and credit the TV version to pseudonymous director Alan Smithee.

-- The movie is loosely based on the Leonard Peltier case of 1975, who was a member of AIM and was conveniently found guilty (despite two of Peltier's compatriots in AIM being found innocent) of the murder of two FBI agents on the basis of evidence that many people and experts have found extremely questionable. Peltier is still in prison, despite evidence such as ballistics and witness testimony being discredited since the trial.  John Trudell, who depicts the man the FBI is attempting to capture, was actually present during the events that Leonard Peltier was tried for and was a leader of AIM.

-- Perhaps most significant, in my mind, is actor John Trudell, who plays Jimmy Looks Twice, the fugitive leader of the Aboriginal Rights Movement.  In real-life Trudell is a poet-singer-actor who served in Vietnam and helped lead the 1969 Indian occupation of Alcatraz Island and was national spokesman for and chairman of the American Indian Movement from 1973 to 1979.  The anger and bitterness Trudell displays in the film is very real from his life.  A few hours after Trudell led an AIM demonstration in Washington DC, his wife, three children and mother-in-law were killed in a fire of unknown origin (that many believe was arson and at the hands of the FBI) that destroyed his house on the Shoshone Paiute Reservation in Nevada. 

--  [Spoiler Alert] The real-life situations that inspired the movie: During the early to mid-1970s, there were fifty-seven unsolved murders on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota due to the fighting between the "Traditionals" and Tribal government sanctioned "goons". This made the Village of Pine Ridge (Pop. 1100) on the Pine Ridge Reservation the "Murder Capitol of the Nation" with the highest number of violent death per capita in the United States.  The FBI is supposed to investigate all reservation murders but barely a handful received a cursory investigation.  The character of Jack Milton is based on Dick Wilson, the US Government appointed tribal chairman of the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1972-'76. Traditionalists tried to impeach Wilson in '73.  Dick Wilson also helped the US Government to draw attention away from the fact that he was selling off 1/8 of the Pine Ridge Reservation for uranium mining, without the rest of the tribe knowing or giving their approval.  For more details on this see the Documentary "Incident at Oglala" narrated by Robert Redford.

My Thoughts

A real FBI agent would have been rigidly by the book and Ray Levoi's character wouldn't have strayed from that.  But one of the themes is getting in touch with your roots and we see Agent Ray Levoi go from a shut down, buttoned up man who is ashamed of his heritage to a man who embraces his culture while still questioning the mystical side -- all against the background of a murder investigation with enemies everywhere and very real life-and-death situations.  The acting of Val Kilmer and Graham Greene is superlative and these two actors have great chemistry and interaction.  Plus, having John Trudell in the movie is a profound touch as he is so authentic and powerful in his portrayal it lights the screen up.  

The scenary of the Badlands makes the hard-scrabble life on the reservation visceral while also depicting what is a sacred place to the people.

The mystery is along the lines of an official investigation questioning witnesses and following leads.  There is pressure, like many experience at some point on their jobs, to follow the company line or give into peer pressure.  Ray Levoi's character decides to follow the evidence rather than the senior FBI agent's demands, which gives everybody a hero to cheer for as a seemingly open-and-shut case develops twists and turns with a more complex motive and desperate killer.

Critics of the movie claim it is too Hollywood, that fire fights by FBI agents with children around wouldn't happen - yet they did in the 1970s on the reservation.  Much of what is portrayed many Native American's say is more authentic than people want to believe. 

5 Stars: This movie is complex and has many layers.  It is a solid detective movie with a good script and directing, and wonderful acting.  Another theme is how we need to deal with our own baggage to find inner peace and inspires us to right wrongs all in a sweeping murder investigation that transports you to the Badlands. This is an oldie, but has stood the test of time.  Consider watching or rewatching this classic.

Here is the movie trailer