War Party

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.

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.

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.

War Party (1988) was a film about the racial tensions that exist between the local Native Americans and their white neighbors. An annual re-enactment commemorating a vicious slaughter of Indians at the hands of the U.S. Calvary ignites a powder keg of racial anger that has been brewing amongst the youngsters. During the mock battle, two Indian youths (Billy Wirth and Kevin Dillion) defend themselves from a loud mouth yokel (Kevyn Major Howard) who decides to bring live ammunition to the show. Will the powder keg explode? Who will fall victim to this ignorance? Can the two races still co-exist after this tragedy?

A very underrated film. What I liked about it was that it dealt with an issue that still exist in this country. Even though it's not in the open, racial tensions between the whites and Indians will always be there. It'll take education and acceptance to do away with it. But many people are still ignorant to the fact. I wish this movie was available on D.V.D. I saw it most recently on satellite t.v. A very underrated movie that's still searching for an audience.

Recommended.

This film will probably remind people of a indian rosewood. But this storyline isn't so accurate,the action scenes are like a circus especially the carnival fight(It reminded me of a soprano episode last week)When do modern day police use double barreld shotguns and old fashion 45 peacemakers, not to mention the level action rifles I thought it was supposed to take place in the 80's. Somehow it appears that the national guard soilders at the end of the movie think there in Vietnam,they play volleyball while camping out in the badlands waiting to capture the two young indian suspects.Released in '89 this was probably the beginning of the politically correct era in movies. It came out a year and a half before Dances with Wolves,and the indians are no longer the bad guys.The movie on the other hand will entertain you with comic book action and will also so get you mad seeing the unjustice & racsim that the indians are going through.