Incident at Oglala (1992)
*** (out of 4)
Documentary about the June 26, 1975 shooting at the Pine Ridge Indian reservation in Oglala, South Dakota where two FBI agents chased a truck onto the property and minutes later they were shot dead. Two people were found not guilty but a third, Leonard Peltier, was found guilty and sentenced to prison but much evidence shows that he wasn't the man pulling the trigger. I had never really heard of this case, although Apted's THUNDERHEART is loosely based around the events here and my main reason for watching this was because of the director as well as narrator/producer Robert Redford. I think those already familiar with the case are going to be the ones who really benefit from this film. As someone not overly familiar with it, I found the documentary to try and show every side of the debate and quite often the stories got mixed together and were rather hard to follow. This hard to follow stuff is perhaps due to the actual case, which seemed to be all over the place in terms of what really happened. Every witness seems to be telling a different story and many of them have changed their stories over the years. The evidence showing that Peltier is pretty interesting but at the same time you have those who are dead certain that he was guilty. The film clearly wants to show him as an innocent victim but I guess it will always be a mystery as that what really happened and in what ordered the events occurred. Director Apted does a very good job at getting many of the original people together for this, including Peltier, who is still in prison.
