the audience applauded

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Last of the Dogmen is written and directed by Tab Murphy. It stars Tom Berenger, Barbara Hershey, Kurtwood Smith and Steve Reevis. Music is scored by David Arnold and cinematography by Karl Walter Lindenlaub. When three convicts escape from prison and head into the Montana mountains, the local law enforcer hires skillful tracker/bounty hunter Lewis Gates (Berenger) to go find them. What he finds is torn clothes, blood and an Indian arrow. After spying someone in the trees it leads Gates to an investigation on the possibility of a lost tribe of Cheyenne Indians living in the mountains.A thoroughly enjoyable contemporary Western, even if it's cribbing clichés from a number of films and TV episodes of the past. Formula of story is simple, grizzled tracker man Berenger and prim anthropologist Hershey are poles apart, but into the mountains they go in search of a hidden tribe of Cheyenne. That they find them is a given, since the title says it all, but what unfolds is a burgeoning relationship between the two, while much understanding and soul searching involving the "alien" Cheyenne makes for a good chunk of the narrative. There's observations galore in here about the advancement of time, different cultures etc, and a nod to the Sand Creek Massacre, while a back story sub-plot involving Kurtwood Smith is deftly handled; if a little redundant in the grand scheme of things.Anyone who has seen the likes of The African Queen, Dances With Wolves and the Twilight Zone Episode: A Hundred Yards Over The Rim, wont be particularly surprised by what transpires in eventuality. But Berenger and Hershey make for a nice duo to be in the company of, while Kip the dog steals the film from both of them! Though story is set in Montana, film was shot on location in Alberta and British Columbia, and here is the film's trump card, where Lindenlaub's photography is quite simply stunning. In fact his work, and that of Arnold, whose score darts in and out of the landscape, deserves to be in an "A" grade movie. It rounds out as very watchable, a professional picture that just about manages to sustain interest and good will for the two hours run time. 7/10

This is a very poorly acted film with a very thin script, Tom Beringer looked as if he was distracted and disinterested in showing any acting ability. He used to be such a fine actor. It is sad to see him like this. Maybe he was just burnt out.I am a bit surprised so many people loved this forgettable film. John Wayne is not much of actor and people love him. Even John Wayne's movies look like masterpieces compared to this rubbish. It is a commonly held view that Americans have been systematically dumbed down over the past few decades. I never imagined until now jut how dumb they've become. Don't get me wrong the US is the best country in the world when it comes to mediocrity. Great American films haven't been made for so long that rubbish like this has risen in popularity. How sad.

This movie is one of our favorites. We own it and watch it almost every time it is on TV. We are RVers and travel to remote areas where DVD or video are our only choices. Dogman is always with us. We have traveled thru the area in Canada where this movie was filmed-it is some of the most spectacular scenery we have ever seen. The first time I saw the movie the story line was so believable I had to look it up on the "net" to see if there was any truth to the story. Where the story itself is not based on fact, the actual Indian beliefs and thoughts I think are true. Tom Berenger is excellent in the role of Lewis and the dog is great. We are dog lovers. We also have a great fondness for Native American stories and traditions. This movie should be part of everyone movie library.

***SPOILERS*** You at first don't exactly know what your watching in "the Last of the Dogmen" it that it has nothing at all to do with the 19th century American West but the hunt for a trio of escaped convicts in the wilds of modern Montana.Being sent out to captured the dangerous fugitives, who had killed a prison guard in their escape attempt, is the grizzled and fatalistic bounty hunter Lewis Gates, Tom Berenger, and his faithful companion, and only friend in the world, his tracking dog Zip.Tracking the three fugitives into the impassable Oxbow Quadrangle Gates finds what's left of them with a broken Indian arrow as the only clue to what exactly did them in. It's back in town that Gates' curiosity gets the best of him as he tries to get to the bottom of what happened to the three convicts! It's there that Gates contacts anthropologist Prof. Diane Sloan, Barbara Hershey, who's conducting an archaeological dig in the area. The findings from that one broken Cheyenne arrow will lead both Gate's and Diane into a world that was lost for some 130 years. A world that had the survivors of the brutal 1864 US Calvary "Sand Creek Massacre" go into hiding for over a century. It also had them protect their unexplored and pristine land with the bravery and ferocity of the then, back in the 1860's, Cheyenne Dogmen whom these now modern Indians are the descendants of.Gates who had shut himself off from the world since his wife the daughter of the town's Sheriff Deegan, Kurtwood Smith, was accidentally drowned-when she fell off her horse-would in fact find a new reason for living in the dangerous world beyond the "Wolf Valley" in the Oxbow. It was there that the remaining Dogmen Cheyenne tribe settled and lived in peace from the hated "white man" for over 100 years.It took a long time for Gates with the help of the fluently Cheyenne speaking Diane to win over the suspicious Dogman Indians but in the end it proved dividends to both in each taking turns saving each others lives. In fact it was Gates who lead sheriff Deegan and a posse of local citizens to the Dogmen's camp but only in his attempt to save the chief's son's, who was earlier shot by one of the escaped convicts, life. Gates did that by riding into town and robbing the local pharmacy to get life-saving penicillin! The final moments of the movie "Last of the Dogman" is about the most feel-good, without being too schmaltzy, ending I've even seen in that Gates together with Diane and Zip, who was almost killed by a Cheyenne arrow, ended up being together in Dogman Country. A place where time stands still and where life, and the environment, isn't corrupted.P.S The movie besides its uplifting storyline and powerful acting by Tom Berenger Barbara Hershey and the Dogman's Indian Chief Yellow Wolf played by Steve Reevis is also beautifully narrated by actor and former rodeo clown, who's job is to distracts a wild 2,000 pound bull from goring a fallen rider, Wilford Brimley.