Cheyenne Warrior Reviews

Combining an unusual appreciation of the vicissitudes of frontier life with an elegiac sense of the plight of native Americans, CHEYENNE WARRIOR is a thinking man's western. It's a welcome throwback to the traditions of the genre, set against a breathtaking wilderness backdrop which virtually emerges as a character in itself. Ill-equipped to cope with the hazards of prairie travel, conscription-dodger Matthew Carver (Charles Powell) and his newlywed bride Becky (Kelly Preston) are befriended by Mr. Barclay (Dan Haggerty), a frontier merchant who's related by marriage to the Cheyenne. Matthew rides off to warn two buffalo hunters, Kearney (Rick Dean) and Otto Nielsen (Clint Howard), that they're being tracked by a band of Indians who aim to put a stop to their practice of slaughtering buffaloes and abandoning their carcasses. The vicious Kearney guns Matthew down in order to steal his cherished rifle, wards off the Indian party, coldly finishes off the wounded Otto, and returns to Barclay's post to offer Becky his protection. Kearney blames Matthew's death on the Indians, who unwittingly shot an arrow into Matthew's corpse. When Barclay learns the truth from his blood brother Hawk (Pato Hoffman), Kearney murders him as well. Kearney attempts to rape Becky, but a seriously injured Hawk kills him with a well-aimed knife. In nursing the Cheyenne Hawk back to health, Becky overcomes her prejudices and contemplates making a home for herself at the trading post. Even after the Pawnee attack and the Cheyenne ostracize Hawk for befriending a white woman, Becky resolves to have Matthew's child and stay put until the arrival of the spring wagon train. Hawk, however, senses that Becky is dangerously caught between two cultures and hastens her return to her own people by burning down the post. Knowing she won't marry into his tribe despite her love for him, Hawk escorts Becky and her newborn child to the passing wagon train of Mr. Andrews (Bo Hopkins). Hawk returns to his people and becomes a tribal warrior, while Becky heads west, having renamed her child Matthew Hawk Carver. CHEYENNE WARRIOR offers the pleasures of a forbidden love story without stinting on the Wild West action. Realistically depicting frontier life as a daily exercise in side-stepping premature death, this sagebrush drama generally eschews anachronisms, yet it manages to create topical interest due to its sensitive handling of the central inter-racial relationship. The narrative aptly balances Becky and Hawk's emotional needs against the context of the constraints placed on them by two warring cultures. Economical and relatively unsentimental, this engrossing western doesn't boast imaginative direction or big-budget thrills, but its action staging is crisply efficient and its lead performances are convincingly straightforward. Instead of inviting us to watch contemporary actors play a quaint game of historical dress-up, CHEYENNE WARRIOR persuades us that we're actually watching people who drive buckboards, eat beef jerky, and sleep with rifles by their beds. Overblown western dramas like WYATT EARP and LEGENDS OF THE FALL could have picked up a few lessons from this modest success. (Extreme profanity, violence, sexual situations.)