Sioux City

I am an Ojibwe American Indian. Once again I endured yet another Hollywood film that hopes to be a story about American Indians. And fails. As have so many. Phillips is a tiny part Cherokee. All his acting adult life he has used that tiny edge to star in some of the most awful films and TV series where he plays some ango writer'0s version of an American Indian. And fails. This one he actually produced. Some reviewers gave it a high rating. It is clear that when people know nothing at all about American Indians they can make up a story and pretend, with their good intentions, that they have done something. And failed yet again. Everything here is wpng. The story is trite and shallow. The great exploration of tribal beliefs is laughable. The painted chicken feathers pretending to be Eagle Feathers are everywhere. It is just sad how incorrect every detail truly is, even though Phillips was certain he was making something great. It is boring beyond endurance. The writing is childish. Most of the actors are stumbling, unprepared, and just foolish. Fail on all counts. But at least he had such good intentions.

I've always liked Lou Diamond Phillips and I thought this was a well done and entertaining movie. I'm coming to it late, but that's okay. Interesting native American spirit to it as well, which I've always found to be intriguing and beautiful.

This is an interesting film for me in that I actually know someone like Lou Diamond Phillips's character in Sioux City. He's also an orphan Indian, in his case Chippewa, who was adopted and raised by Jewish parents. Unlike Lou's character, he shows no promise of becoming a doctor. I do wonder sometimes though if this individual's substance abuse problems might be partially the result of an identity problem. If you saw him now at the age of 36 you would not mistake him for being Jewish.

Lou Diamond Phillips faces an identity crisis in Sioux City. His mother Tantoo Cardinal gave him up for adoption at a young age to Mr.&Mrs. Goldman of Beverly Hills. He's grown up to be a young doctor interning at one of Los Angeles's hospitals. He gets a note from his birth mother with an amulet asking him to visit her on the reservation. When he goes there, he finds she's dead, victim of a fire of suspicious origin.

In Lou Diamond Phillips's multi-cultural background is part Cherokee Indian and he's certainly taken on Indian roles and done them quite well as he does in Sioux City. He directed this film and it's a good one that was obviously a labor of love for him. Sad in this day and age a film like Sioux City could not find an audience because it's a good story of a man both solving the riddle of his mother's death and the riddle of his own identity.

Phillips got good support from Salli Richardson as the trading post owner on the reservation, Ralph Waite, not as lovable Dad Walton, but a vicious and corrupt local sheriff and Apesanahkwat as Lou's birth grandfather, a Lakota Medicine Man.

The cinematography at the Lakota Reservation was done with an obviously loving hand. It's a good effort by Lou Diamond Phillips and his cast and it's sad more people didn't get to see this.

I really liked this movie but I like Indian stories. This was a good yesteryear of a civilized Indian going back to his roots to solve the mystery of his birth mothers past. The full story comes out at the end. I've seen Lou play some good roles.

Review of Sioux City, aka Ultimate Revenge

Lou Diamond Phillips is Jesse Rainfeather Goldman in this tale of a Sioux indian boy given up for adoption to become a casualty department doctor fostered by two Jewish parents in LA.

When he receives a letter and amulet from his birth mother on his birthday, he is bound to go and look her up in Nebraska, only to find she died under suspicious circumstances. He gets re-acquainted with his relatives, such as his medicine man grandfather and also with a girl working at the local store (Salli Richardson - allow me to pick up my tongue from my shoes, please... wow). All he can remember of his mother are flashes of memory, her giving him up, and her being knocked about by some faceless man.

After pressing his luck by trying to impress on the local chief of police that his mother's death wasn't an accident and picking up the chief's daughter (Lise Cutter), he gets followed around and is almost beaten to death by the local police hoodlums.

This is an interesting movie, even though it has all the production values of a movie of the week, made for tv, Canadian effort.

It's main thread is about an unsolved murder, but it is really about the multiplous ethnic/racial/national/religious/professional identities many of us juggle with in this modern world. Considering his biography, this might well be a crypto- biographical effort on the part of Lou Diamond Phillips, and why he might have taken on the project and directed it.

All in all, not a great movie, but not a really bad one either, and interesting for it's existential ideas and viewpoints, rather than it's thematic originality.