Geronimo (1993)

Geronimo: Directed by Walter Hill. With Jason Patric, Gene Hackman, Robert Duvall, Wes Studi. The story of the Apache chief and his armed resistance to the U.S. Government’s subjugation of his people.

“Despite the creative presence of Walter Hill and John Milius behind it, the movie gets a lot of things wrong. Matt Damonu0026#39;s grating voice-over is handled with little care and is nothing more than the grappling hook that drags the movie from one episode to the next as though weu0026#39;re reading an encyclopedic entry rather than watching a fully fleshed movie. The point-of-view is never allowed to remain within one side or group of characters long enough for them to come alive as anything than cutouts from a history page. We donu0026#39;t stay long enough to learn the actual problems that plagued the Chiricahua (and other Apache bands) in the San Carlos and White River reservations and we donu0026#39;t stay long enough with General Crook and his cavalry to begin to understand the tightrope the sympathetic General (who no less came to the Southwest after slaughtering Cheyennes in the North) has to walk in trying to appease an anxious government in the East while doing his best to save what remains of the Apaches from the encroachment of white settlers into their lands. As a piece of history the movie is naturally inadequate because the Indian affairs in the Southwest were more complex than a movie can afford to depict. As a gritty western action movie (the kind which Walter Hill is the expert) itu0026#39;s too sprawling and incoherent to ever get enough steam. We get the occasional slow-motion gunfight and a pretty good saloon standoff but theyu0026#39;re not enough to save the movie from rumbling mediocrity.”