The Dark Wind

Film adaptations of novels are a mixed bag at best, and The Dark Wind, allegedly based on Tony Hillerman's novel of the same name, isn't one of the best. The screenwriters took several unnecessary liberties with the storyline and characters, including stealing details from other Hillerman novels and dropping Captain Largo entirely in favor of Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn. Fans of Hillerman's novels won't like the portrayal of Jim Chee as an awkward, barely-competent rookie, either.

It's hard to tell whether Lou Diamond Phillips is just failing to portray Jim Chee as he's intended to be, or whether he just didn't bother to read the book and find out. Having replaced Captain Largo's character with Fred Ward as Joe Leaphorn, the script doesn't take advantage of either character's personality, but at least they didn't turn him into one of those generic shouting police captains we see so much of in the movies.

Despite all of this, it's a fairly likeable movie. The film was shot on location in and around the Navajo reservation in Arizona and New Mexico. The scenery is magnificent, and judging from the names in the cast and crew, the producers took advantage of local talent to fill in some of the smaller roles, which adds a good bit of authenticity. If you close one eye and pretend it has nothing to do with a Tony Hillerman novel, you'll probably enjoy it.

I like "The Dark Wind." Though it didn't follow the novel to the last detail, it did follow it much more than the subsequent "Mystery" TV movies did. And this one definitely has the flavor of the Hillerman novels. It's not a blockbuster. In fact THIS probably should have been a TV movie as well. While they cherry-picked some details from other novels, the details of Navajo life and behavior that Hillerman describes in his novels are there. Some people didn't like that Leaphorn was inserted in the story though he wasn't in the original novel. I didn't mind that at all--they were intending to make more of these and the most popular stories have both characters. And the handling of Leaphorn is SO MUCH better here than in those Mystery TV-movies (in which they made Leaphorn Chee's "City Guy" foil.)

There is one thing I want to clear up though--the "boom mic mistakes: so many folks mention. The boom mic that intrudes in to several shots in the home video version (which is the only version we have, unfortunately)is NOT A MISTAKE BY THE DIRECTOR OR THE CINEMATOGRAPHER. It is an error in the transfer of the film to the home video format.

Many 1.85:1 widescreen films shot in the 80s and 90s were really shot at 1.33:1, non-anamorphic. The "widescreen" effect was then achieved by masking off the top and bottom of the image. Sometimes the studios did this on the print itself, but sometimes they would leave it to the projectionist in the theater--if he/she projected it so that each side reached the edge of the screen and centered the imaged vertically, the "masking" was achieved simply because the top and bottom of the image was bleeding off the screen. I know that was done because back in the day I saw several films where the projectionist did not center the image vertically and all kinds of stuff the audience was never meant to see would be visible--boom mics, lights, rigging, and etc. I have specific memories of seeing this in "Cheech and Chong's Next Movie" and Richard Pryor's "Busting Loose." So, if the folks who released "The Dark Wind" to home video back in the day had given a crap, they'd have either 1) masked the film to 1.85:1 or cropped it in on ALL sides for a proper old-type TV 1.33:1 ratio.

Anyway, if you have a widescreen TV (and wide is the norm now) all you have to do is blow up the image so that the right and left sides of the image go all the way to the edge and the tops and bottoms get cut off(on my Samsung it's the "Zoom 1" setting). THEN you'll see the image as it was meant to be framed, with no boom mics in sight. AND, I might add, the landscapes and other scenes will look much more impressive as well, as it emphasizes the wide horizons.

Lou Diamond Phillips is the perfect "Jim Chee". I have read many of Tony Hillerman's novels and this was a great rendition. I saw this movie in college for an anthropology class. The best two classes of the semester!! (Thanks Dr. Neeley) The scenery was beautiful. The story line was exciting, true to the book. The only thing I would change would be the actor who plays Joe Leaphorn. Nothing against Fred Ward, he did a good job, but when you read book after book with the same characters you tend to visualize these people in your mind. And I have always envisioned James Olmos from Miami Vice as Leaphorn. I would love to see more of these novels made into movies.

For me, the biggest shame of this movie is that the horribly botched direction gets in the way of what I consider an excellent performance by Lou Diamond Phillips in the title role. Whether his performance was exactly what fans of the book expected Jim Chee to be like or not (I read the book first, and personally thought Lou did quite a nice interpretation of Chee), the fact remains that the performance was a high quality example of subtle film acting.

And for those who quibble that Lou shouldn't have played the role because he wasn't a full blood Navajo...well, I'd like to know who the hell Russell Crowe thinks he is! For an Australian to be allowed to play an American in A BEAUTIFUL MIND and an Italian in GLADIATOR...It's just not right!

Having grown up in Northern Arizona and living next to the Navajo Reservation, I was very excited when Hillerman's book became a movie; until I saw it. Navajo friends told me that Lou Diamond Phillips actually spoke pretty good Navajo in the film. It's too bad those in charge of production didn't care enough to make the quality film this story should have been. When you see microphones dangling during key scenes (or any scene for that matter) you know somebody didn't give a rip about this project.