I enjoyed Chief Dan George's schtick with Eastwood in The Outlaw Josey Wales and wondered what he did in his Oscar-nominated role. It turned out to be a jag from many recent things: in the lead is Dustin Hoffman (Megalopolis) with Faye Dunaway billed second (Faye, The Thomas Crown Affair). Thayer David is somewhere down the list (he played Dragon in The Eiger Sanction). Directed by Arthur Penn (Bonnie and Clyde) from a script adapted by Calder Willingham (Paths of Glory, Spartacus, One Eyed Jacks, The Graduate, Thieves Like Us) from the novel by Thomas Berger.
This is a take on relations between Native Americans and the white man around the period of the U.S. Civil War. In a framing story Hoffman is about 121 years old and is the last person to have direct experience of General George Armstrong Custer. He proceeds to tell us a tale in flashback that reminded me most of Forrest Gump's take on a good chunk of the twentieth-century U.S. experience. I guess it also inspired Dances with Wolves and provided a runway for the far more ambitious Blazing Saddles. How much you enjoy this depends on how much you're prepared to indulge Hoffman; I felt he was nowhere as comedic as Gene Wilder or Cleavon Little and my general allergy to him was not abated. Dunaway plays the wayward wife of Reverend David who tries so hard to be good. Chief is a chief and is good when given the chance.
Roger Ebert: four stars. "Endlessly entertaining." Vincent Canby: sometimes "the effect [...] is that of borrowed Yiddish humor."
