Val Kilmer and Sam Shepard investigate a murder on a South Dakota Reservation
A young, half-Sioux FBI agent (Val Kilmer) teams-up with a veteran agent (Sam Shepard) to investigate a murder on a Reservation in western South Dakota where the pro-government faction conflicts with ARM, the Aboriginal Rights Movement radicals. Graham Greene plays a tribal police officer.
“Thunderheart” (1992) is a Western that takes place in the modern day loosely based on events relating to the Wounded Knee incident in 1973. ARM from this movie is an expy of AIM, the American Indian Movement, which is a traditionalist organization that was radically active in those days and still exists. Some understandably consider AIM a terrorist organization back then in light of actions such as Leonard Peltier’s murder of two FBI agents in 1975 at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which is referenced by Cooch in the movie (Shepard).
You don’t have to be knowledgeable of any of this stuff or to take one side or the other to appreciate the movie. While it takes a side (which I’m not going to reveal), I’m in the middle and just here for the picture. I like the film, but it’s slightly hindered by wannabe hip banter. Moreover, the almost god-like powers of certain AmerIndians are laid on too thick, but I appreciated some of the spiritual elements.
The film runs 1 hours, 59 minutes, and was shot in South Dakota at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Wounded Knee Cemetery and Badlands National Park, as well as Washington DC.
GRADE: B-