War Party

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.

Pretty well-written and well-directed. The plot has holes, and there are the stereo-typical Caucasian jerks one expects to find in a story involving racial tension between two cultures. However, despite its failings, this film has a refreshing quality to it. The dialog is far more natural than one usually finds, and the characters mostly behave the way people really behave... mostly. Predictable? Yes, but I've seen far worse.

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.

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.