Fantastic!

Better Late Then Never

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Instead, you get a movie that's enjoyable enough, but leaves you feeling like it could have been much, much more.

Plenty of films of this vintage suffer from boom mikes in frame and the top and dolly tracks visible at the bottom: this is an artifact born of failed productions. When the camera operator composed the shot, he had been told the film was being made for theatrical release, in a 1:1.85 ratio and so when the boom dipped down slightly, but not enough to make it into the "letterbox" they let it slide. Then, after the film failed on the festival circuit or preview process, etc and was dumped to video no one cared to correct the errors - they were all just trying to dump the project on the market as quickly as possible. Had the final "release print" been made, instead of a video transfer from the camera original (mivees and all) we would have been spared the spectacle of seeing mister boom mike. Most of these types of film were being dumped onto the video market before consumers cared to see letterboxed releases, so the transfer was made full frame.

Lou Diamond Phillips is the perfect "Jim Chee". I have read many of Tony Hillerman's novels and this was a great rendition. I saw this movie in college for an anthropology class. The best two classes of the semester!! (Thanks Dr. Neeley) The scenery was beautiful. The story line was exciting, true to the book. The only thing I would change would be the actor who plays Joe Leaphorn. Nothing against Fred Ward, he did a good job, but when you read book after book with the same characters you tend to visualize these people in your mind. And I have always envisioned James Olmos from Miami Vice as Leaphorn. I would love to see more of these novels made into movies.

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!

Any film that is overloaded with voice-over narration to explain the shortcomings of the script deserves a slap on the wrist. I had not read the novel from which this is supposedly taken, and only watched because I knew Lou Diamond Phillips when he was a student here in Dallas before he became famous... and it is obvious this was one of his very early films. He looks innocently sweet and precious but seems to be struggling beneath a script that is sorely lacking. Makes me, as a screenwriter, wonder how on earth any producer plonked down the dough to make this film in the first place....