Jeu de Guerre

The setting is in the present, but the problems are eternal for American-Indians; the white man has stolen their land, but they cannot take away the Indian heritage. Dillion does a good job, as does Cher, I mean Sonny. The young actors carry most of the film, but it is the story that is the real star of the film. Modern Indian life is little better than it was a hundred years ago. An entertaining film that had the feeling of Rambo at times, and Thelma and Louise at other times. An entertaining film and recommended.

In the 1988 version of "War Party" we see the classic struggle for justice and equal treatment that all our Native brothers face. The whole underlying theme to this film would be the issue of racism in and among our border towns. I liked the movie more when I was 12 years old than I do now understanding the reverse effect movies like this sometimes bring. I feel that it was a great film of its day. Billy Wirth had an outstanding performance as "Sonny". I would have liked to seen him play more parts in films such as this one. Bradley N.C.

I remember when I was about 13 years old this movie was filmed in my hometown and on my reservation. I was very anxious to watch it and eagerly looked at the places I lived near all my young life as they appeared onscreen.

Being an enrolled Blackfeet Indian it is easy for me to get caught up in the whole nature of this film, because, after all, this is a film about Blackfeet indians. I choose to look at it in a different way though. The plot is far fetched to say the least and the movie is quite silly all together. I enjoyed watching it, but it's not an altogether good film. It really doesn't make any profound statement or stir up any topic of discussion. If this was a movie that was intended to take an in depth look at indians and then provoke some sort of emotion, well then, it failed completely at that direction.

I choose to believe that War Party was made to be entertaining and not thought provoking though. A sort of "what if this really did happen" type of movie that gives the watcher a chance to see a wild happenstance that wouldn't occur in todays society. An interesting film if you are a film struck young man who has grown up in the area where it was shot, but not much more than a boring night in front of your tv and VCR if you are anybody else in this world. The most significant accomplishment this movie has done is it helped launch the career of Billy Worth who is now foraying from acting and becoming a director to reckon with in the near future.

Yeah - I guess, I'm a typical guy, because I like mindless entertainment. Package it with decent acting, at least passable scripting, and good production values and I'll watch it.

This is a silly movie...A reinactment of a battle of settlers vs. Indians goes awry and people really start getting shot..... You can hear the people in the studios getting excited over this one as they dug deep for the money to finance it.

But really it's not THAT bad. You've got Matt Dillon's little brother (who I really like more, because he's more interesting) and you've got Billy Wirth (who, when this movie was made had appeared in The Lost Boys and nothing more). They can act though. The sets are good - (and let's face it - I love a western - even an implausible one) and the action is exciting, albeit stupid.

Okay, so the movie's no good - but it's a good kind of no good. It beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

Probably I've watched this movie half-a-dozen times, once with a white theatre audience close to the rez and the rest on tape with Blackfeet high school students. The student attitude was summed up by a handsome young man who sighed and remarked, "The first time you see it, it seems pretty good, but after about the third time, it just falls apart." The theatre audience just didn't like it, period.

It was fun to see friends and neighbors in a movie. Locals grew fond of the actors while they were in town. But the whole line of argument that drove the plot meant nothing to the people it was supposed to be about. Sure, there's racism -- but it comes to us as job discrimination or court systems or broken families or drug peddlers. Renegade kids are not romantically pursued over the landscape by caricature bad guys. (What the heck was the idea of Rodney Grant's character, anyway?) They just get picked up speeding or something -- by officers who are Indian -- and end up quietly taken to jail.

I hated the faux samurai ending, romanticizing death in a place where suicide is a problem. Plainly this was a movie written by people who didn't want to know anything about reality and didn't care what impact their movie had on the people to whom they were supposed to be sympathetic. It's a projection of themselves, a continuing problem for Native American films and one that has mostly been solved so far by Indians making their own movies.