The Dark Wind

Plenty of films of this vintage suffer from boom mikes in frame and the top and dolly tracks visible at the bottom: this is an artifact born of failed productions. When the camera operator composed the shot, he had been told the film was being made for theatrical release, in a 1:1.85 ratio and so when the boom dipped down slightly, but not enough to make it into the "letterbox" they let it slide. Then, after the film failed on the festival circuit or preview process, etc and was dumped to video no one cared to correct the errors - they were all just trying to dump the project on the market as quickly as possible. Had the final "release print" been made, instead of a video transfer from the camera original (mivees and all) we would have been spared the spectacle of seeing mister boom mike. Most of these types of film were being dumped onto the video market before consumers cared to see letterboxed releases, so the transfer was made full frame.

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.

Having read the book of the same title by Tony Hillerman, I believe the movie is one of the best in being as close to the book as possible. The story is great but film-making was terrible. There is at least one shot in the movie where the boom mike is clearly visible at the top of the screen. Also, the acting from most of the people wasn't that great. As far as Lou Diamond Phillips goes, I have seen him do much better than this film, and I think the best actor was Gary Farmer in the role of Cowboy Dashee. However, if you're a fan of the books, I recommend seeing this and I hope that the upcoming Hillerman stories on PBS are better than this one.

Despite the 'creative differences' with producer Robert Redford that did not allow director Errol Morris to finish The Dark Wind, the final product did not turn out half bad. Sad that it was relegated to straight to video and did not get a theatrical release.

I liked Lou Diamond Phillips very much as Navajo Reserrvation officer Jim Chee, hero of many books by Tony Hillerman. Being part Cherokee himself, Phillips does have a very good insight into playing Indian characters as in Renegades, Young Guns I & II, and Sioux City.

Here he's the new guy on the force and hasn't made all that good an impression on his new boss, Fred Ward when he drives into a ditch while in hot pursuit of some speeders.

A lot of very strange, seemingly unconnected things are happening that Lou is asked to look into. A decaying body of an Navajo, the vandalism of a windmill, a plane crash in the middle of the reservation, some missing heroin from said crash, and the burglary of the Navajo Trading Post, yet all are connected. And Lou winds up on a suspect list as well.

Location shooting on the Navajo and Hopi Reservations really helps the story along. And there are some nice performances by Gary Farmer as a Hopi Deputy Sheriff, Gary Basaraba and Guy Boyd as a pair of DEA agents, and John Karlen as the trading post owner. Besides Lou and Farmer who are American Indians, a whole lot of the supporting players and small parts are played by same.

It's a good film, despite some filming goofs, with some very nice performances and a good story.

Hey even Alfred Hitchcock had some goofs in some of his classics.

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.