The Activist and Tiger Eyes
Russell Means' son Tatanka Means and his co-star Willa Holland are fine actors but there's no much onscreen chemistry between them. Hopefully there will be better films for both of them in the near future.
Although the scene is beautiful, the onscreen chemistry just isn't there. It's like watching two people on a date who clearly aren't into each other. You keep spending the whole time wondering what they see in one another.
The Activist is set on or near the Pine Ridge Reservation during the occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973. It is directed by a French director and the film has gotten more attention in France than in North America.
The cinematic offerings that highlight Native American or Indigenous issues or feature promising Native American or Indigenous actors have been pretty thin lately, but I thought I'd take this issue of Indian Life to let you know about two films I've seen recently that fall into those categories.
The Activist is a film set on (or near) the Lakota Sioux Pine Ridge Reservation during the Wounded Knee occupation in 1973. Cyril Moran, a Frenchman, directs it and the film has gotten more attention on that side of the ocean. It's not an easy film to find over here, but it is available on Amazon Instant Video.
Almost the entire film takes place in a jail cell, and that devotion to one set makes it feel like a play more than a movie. Chadwick Brown and Michael Spears play two members of AIM (American Indian Movement) who get picked up by the local sheriff's office for no good reason. One of the sheriff's deputies (played by Ron Rogge) is a racist bully. The other isn't so bad, and is even willing to help out the two men in his cell, but he's pretty timid, kind of confused, and afraid to stand up to his partner.
Brown and Spears don't know it but they have access to information about uranium mining in the Black Hills that could be damaging to a lot of movers and shakers, and so they get visited (and threatened) by a series of people-a Nixon adviser, a movie star, and a senator-who think they know a lot more than they do. Toward the end of the film, in a pretty clumsy moment of exposition, they figure out why everyone's so interested in them, and why they're being held in a jail cell.
But then, right at the end, something tragic (and extremely implausible) happens, so that the film can end on a grim note.
It's great to see a film that addresses Native issues, even one from 40 years ago, because these things get swept under the rug far too often (and the issue addressed in The Activist isn't very different from ones many tribes face today). And I really like Michael Spears; he's one of my favorite Native actors, and I wish he were in more movies.
But this film feels really amateurish; it tries to cram too many themes into its relatively short running time, and the ending just feels like twisting the knife for the sake of it. Quite frankly, it hasn't garnered much attention in North America because it's not very good.
The other film, Tiger Eyes, unfortunately, isn't any better. Actually, it might be worse. I watched it because it prominently features Tatanka Means, a young (and hopefully) rising Native American actor. It even has a few scenes featuring Russell Means, the legendary and revered Lakota activist and occasional actor (he was also in Natural Born Killers and Last of the Mohicans, among other films and TV shows). Russell Means died shortly after Tiger Eyes finished filming, so that adds some additional poignancy to his performance here.
But one would hope for a better movie for this father/son duo to act in than Tiger Eyes. Based on a Judy Blume novel (and directed by Judy's son, Lawrence,) Tatanka Means plays the love interest of Willa Holland, who moves to Alamosa after her father is gunned down in his New Jersey convenience store. You have to cringe when young Means introduces himself to her simply as "Wolf," but to its credit, the film mostly avoids other cringe-worthy stereotypes of Native peoples-though "Wolf" has an odd habit of feeding her cheesy proverbs in Spanish.
There is, unfortunately, not an iota of chemistry between Means and Holland, and that drags down their scenes together almost unbearably. On screen chemistry is a funny thing; it's either there or it isn't, and when it isn't, it's rarely the fault of the actors. But it's like watching two people on a date who clearly aren't "into" each other-you spend the whole time wondering what they could possibly see in each other. It's not a fun movie-watching experience.
The rest of the film isn't any better, either, and Holland goes through the motions of dealing with her grief over her dad's death in some of the most routine and clichéd ways possible.
Russell Means has only a few scenes, but they stand out, because they are perhaps the only scenes in the film that don't feel forced and stiff. Agree or disagree with the man's politics and activist stances, he had a natural presence and charisma in front of the camera. I think his son has it too, and I really hope we get to see him in better films than this in the future.
I'm sorry but I can't really recommend either of these films, but you should at least know that they're out there.
Willie Krischke lives in Durango, Colorado and works for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship with Native American students at Fort Lewis College. To read more of his reviews, go to http://www.gonnawatchit.com
