That was an excellent one.

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) ** 1/2 (out of 4)The Apache Indians aren't willing to accept the U.S. Goverments offer of living on reservations. Leading their resistance is Geronimo (Wes Studi) so Lt. Gatewood (Jason Patric) is assigned to try and talk him into surrendering.I'm pretty sure I'm the only person out there that had a negative reaction to GERONIMO: AN AMERICAN LEGEND when it was originally released to theaters. While the film wasn't a box office success, it was a major hit with critics who really praised the Walter Hill movie. I didn't like it at the time that it was released so I decided to revisit it and I must say that it still didn't work for me.My biggest issue with the film was the actual story structure as well as the lead performance by Patric. I personally thought there were a lot of very interesting characters in the film but they weren't the lead. I thought the lead character was rather boring and since he was the least interesting character the film just seemed to drag when he was on screen. You've got Gene Hackman playing a General and Robert Duvall playing an Indian hunter. Both of the actors give great performances and both of their characters are a lot more interesting.It doesn't end there because the Geronimo character is also a lot more interesting. I think the film would have been a much better picture had one of those three been the lead and the story revolving around them. Patric's performance is just so laid back that it becomes boring and there's just never any sort of spark when he's on the screen. He's a more than capable actor but it just doesn't work here.Technically speaking the film is certainly beautiful to look at as Hill does a great job at building up the locations as you really do feel as if you're back in the era that this was showing. The music score was another major plus as was the cinematography. As you'd expect, Hill does a great job with the battle sequences as they are certainly the greatest thing about the picture. GERONIMO: AN AMERICAN LEGEND has quite a few things that work but a few too many flaws that keeps me from enjoying it even more.

I love these kind of movies, I had a vague recollection of it even existing and I caught it one lazy Sunday afternoon. Great performances by Wes Studi, the underrated Jason Patric, and the always good Hackman and Duval. I see most of the negative reviews seem to question the historical accuracy, while they may be right, I feel the movie does an excellent job of telling the story of Western civilization's colonizing the state's and the conflicted and differing feeling they had to the treatment of the native American Indians. But mostly it is just a well acted and well told story that is very enjoyable to watch on a quiet afternoon.

"I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves." – John Wayne (interview) "Two thousand years of history, could not be wiped away so easily." – Bob Marley "The Indians must conform to "the white man's ways," peaceably if they will, forcibly if they must. They must adjust themselves to their environment, and conform their mode of living substantially to our civilization. This civilization may not be the best possible, but it is the best the Indians can get. They cannot escape it, and must either conform to it or be crushed by it. The tribal relations should be broken up, socialism destroyed, and the family and the autonomy of the individual substituted." - Commissioner Thomas MorganAfter demonizing Native American Indians for several decades, Hollywood suddenly began releasing a slew of revisionist westerns in the late 60s and early 70s. Enter films like "Buffalo Bill", "Ulzana's Raid", "A Man Called Horse" and "Soldier Blue", all of which forced their audiences to empathise with subjugated natives whilst portraying the "white man" as genocidal brutes bent on conquest. Even John Ford, one-time king of racist caricatures, tried to make amends with "Cheyenne Autumn", his apology for past pictures.Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic, French, Italian and British film-makers were treading similar ground. With the dismantling of the British Empire, British directors began releasing a spread of anti Colonial war films, whilst European directors like Gavras, Wertmuller and Pontecorvo protested the treatment of Algerians and the aggressions of the French Empire.With the battle for history won, films in the early 90s then began to treat this subject in a much more elegiac fashion. Films like "Dances With Wolves", "Thunderheart, "Squanto", "Geronimo" and "The Last of the Mohicans" serve up romantic myths, treating Native Americans with a mixture of reverence, nostalgia and melancholy.Released at the end of this wave, Walter Hill's "Geronimo" focuses on the "Geronimo Campaign", a period of history between 1885 and 1886 in which five thousand US cavalry men attempted to hunt and kill a group of Apache Indians. As is typical of these films, the US Cavalry is portrayed as an aggressive invader whilst the Indians are treated as a band of unfairly persecuted freedom fighters. With the Apaches placed in reservations (ie, concentration camps), caged in trains like Holocaust victims and betrayed by fellow Indians seduced by the false promises of white men, the film is implicitly critical of a certain brand of Colonialism.It's all familiar stuff, very superficially drawn, but the film nevertheless differentiates itself from revisionist westerns in several ways. It revokes the cliché of having an enlightened white man shedding his white ways and fighting for the red skins, and instead adopts a tone of total futility. Here, the battle is already lost, the natives already defeated, and our white hero has long resigned to the horrors of his own actions. Thus, rather than having a white man joining forces with the natives and taking up arms with them against the invaders - your typical "Avatar" narrative - we have a white man attempting to reason with natives such that they accept their own loss. Such that they come to terms with their defeat and stop wasting the lives of their few remaining tribesmen in a futile fight against a technologically and numerically superior foe. Because of this stance, the film plays less like a drama or action fantasy, than a kind of detached tragedy. The weight of a hundred years of history has already determined the outcome of the film, the typical Hollywood fantasies (the flights of fancy where audiences woop with joy as the Indians rebel) rejected entirely. The battle is over. Victory is impossible. History is defeat. This may make for less satisfying viewing, but it gets under your skin.Another bold choice is the resignation of the white officer at the end of the film. Whilst most films in this genre actualise the white man's rage by having him join forces with the enemy and fight against his homeland, the truth is, "doing nothing" is often a much braver act. Violence is not necessarily action. Social structures are run by action, and, contrary to popular opinion, it is violence that makes sure things stay the way they are. Sometimes the truly violent act is to do nothing, a radical refusal often undermining the status quo. Sometimes the only authentic stance to take in dark times is to do nothing, to refuse all commitment (see Renoir's "The Devil Probably"). 7.9/10 - Though directed by Walter Hill, screenwriter John Milius is the real auteur of this picture. Milius' lug-headed politics and passions ooze from every scene, whilst director Walter Hill is simply content to use the tale as an excuse to indulge in his love for his mentors, Peckinpah and Siegel. The film is perhaps better than "Dances With Wolves", but loses points for some middlebrow sermonising. And though critical of US Calvary men and policy makers, the film is nevertheless heavily whitewashed, too fearful to deal with some of the darker truths which occurred during the era. See "Europa Europa".

Geronimo: An American Legend was the last of the fearsome Indians whose very name spread terror to the white settlers of the American West. The film is based on the actual memoirs of the real life character Matt Damon plays. Damon's character Brittain Davis wrote the book in 1929, in the film Damon is a young shave-tail lieutenant newly minted from West Point and assigned to the 6th Cavalry in the Arizona territory. Damon narrates the film and it's through his eyes that we see the action unfold.Army politics factors big in the hunt for Geronimo, General George Crook who was the Army general best known for subduing the Indians had his policy questioned by the officials in Washington and after he captures Geronimo once and then through some gross stupidity an incident happens on the reservation that sets Geronimo on the warpath again, Crook played by Gene Hackman is replaced by General Nelson Miles who is portrayed by Kevin Tighe.That's above the heads of army lieutenant Charles Gatewood who actually does the negotiations to bring Geronimo in and is played by Jason Patric. It's also so much nonsense to army chief of scouts Al Sieber who Robert Duvall plays. They're the ones along with Damon who are actually in the trenches so to speak.The Indian wars of the Arizona Territory are played even handedly in this film showing the courage and brutality on both sides. Geronimo: An American Legend is a fact based tale told from the perspective of one who was actually there. It's a most worthwhile film.