Le Vent sombre

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.

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.

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!

When I first saw The Dark Wind, I was impressed that local people were cast as extras and were speaking the Navajo Language. The subtitles were accurate.

When I heard Chee speak Navajo, it was broken but he's not a native speaker. I was very impressed that he took the time to actually learn to speak the words.