Pow Wow Highway
by Jonathan Wacks
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DVD details
Actor: A Martinez, Amanda Wyss, Gary Farmer, Joannelle Nadine Romero, Sam VlahosDirector: Jonathan Wacks
Brand: STARZ/SPHE
Producer: Carl Kraines
Producer: Denis O'Brien
Producer: George Harrison
Producer: Jan Wieringa
Writer: David Seals
Writer: Janet Heaney
Writer: Jean Stawarz
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 88 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-11-23
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
DVD Reviews of Pow Wow Highway
DVD Review: My pony flipped me!
Summary: 4 Stars
Not my usual film fare, I happened to bump into this film by accident and I'm glad I did. While my knowledge about Native American culture is anything but comprehensive, I found myself swept along 'Pow Wow Highway.' A touching and funny peek into the reservation blues that are part and parcel of the American 'Indian' experience, this film touches all who take a chance on it.
This could have another been another Smoke Signals, poignant and light-hearted, but this film has more meat to it. The reason: the very meaty and lovable Gary Farmer. Farmer's heart-warming performance as Philbert Bono---overweight warrior on his own vision quest---is reason enough to watch this film. Farmer's character doesn't say much nor does he need to. Every stare, twinkle in the eye, and puckish smile tells us everything we need to know.
The film starts off with Philbert daydreaming in his reservation's junk yard. The ugliness of reservation reality surrounds: flimsy mobile homes and trashed-out cars, but Philbert sees beyond all that. He spies himself his 'war-pony,' a rusted-out '64 Buick and saddles up for his adventure. His quest is to become a true Cheyenne warrior. Things don't start off so smoothly as Philbert's childhood friend, the angry young AIM-er, Buddy Red Bow (A Martinez), sets out to rescue his sister. Caught with weed in her car, Red Bow is determined to set her free from the hayseed Anglo cops of the Santa Fe PD. Thus begins Red Bow and Philbert's journey of self-discovery. A journey of finding out what it means to be Native American, and more importantly, what it means to be human. Like Sancho Panza and Don Quixote, Philbert and Red Bow represent two sides of the human coin: passion and reason. Red Bow is all anger and resentment against an Establishment that has robbed, raped and killed his people for over three hundred years. In every scene, we see the seething revolutionary ready to strike. At anybody. One of the film's funniest scenes is when the war pony needs a stereo. Confronted with a condescending salesman, they surprise him and buy the priciest stuff in the shop, shattering his 'impoverished Indian' stereotype. Soon installed in the pony, the new equipment doesn't seem to work, sending Red Bow into a rage, thrashing both shop and owner. And through it all, Philbert searches for and finds the problem: in the instruction manual. Think before you act. A clichéed lesson, but valuable all the same. This interplay between Philbert and Red Bow dominates the whole trip. Whereas Red Bow talks like a warrior, Philbert acts like one. With shrewdness, intelligence, dignity and most of all, humor, Philbert becomes the 'trickster' indeed, masking a deepness of character beneath his childish silliness. Red Bow bitches about the Pine Ridge Pow Wow being nothing more than 'drums in a gym,' while Philbert involves himself in every bit of his past he can. He beats the drum, he climbs the sacred Black Hills, he talks of Cheyenne legends over the CB, while Red Bow fumes and glooms. Red Bow even mistakes the Hills for 'somewhere outside Pueblo.' A grand faux pas. As a result, it is Philbert who becomes the real hero, the real warrior. His weapon is his quietly earned self-knowledge. With silent strength and subtle humour, he takes back what Red Bow with all his rebellion can't: an identity nearly destroyed through years of oppression and negligence. It is no coincidence that by the time they free Red Bow's sister (again, Philbert's doing), Philbert has transformed into his real self: Nightcloud Whirlwind, a warrior.
The beauty of this film is that is goes far beyond social history. Pow Wow Highway shows the wide range of 'types' in the Native American community from assimilated 'collaborator' selling tribal land to mining companies to the tortured and lost Vietnam veteran (brilliantly played by Graham Greene). So wide and rich is the film's parade of characters that we forget that this is supposed to be a 'Native American' film. We see friends and family in these characters and yes, eventually ourselves. And this I think was director Wack's goal: to break down the borders set up by our labels, Native American or otherwise.
While the ending is a bit too predictable and some characters never really get to fly (Red Bow's sister, the fellow AIM activist), Pow Wow Highway is well worth the watching. Follow Nightcloud Whirlwind as he proves the adage: its the quiet ones you need to watch out for.
Description of Pow Wow Highway
For the Northern Cheyenne tribe of Lame Deer, Montana, the American Dream has taken a grim detour. Here, Buddy Red Bow (A Martinez) is a committed activist battling a suspicious land-grab. Philbert Bono (Gary Farmer, in a performance Roger Ebert calls "one of the most wholly convincing I?ve seen") is a serene spiritual warrior guided by sacred visions. But when Buddy?s estranged sister is framed and jailed in New Mexico, the two men take Philbert?s rust-wrecked ?64 Buick ?war pony? on a road trip that makes some very unexpected stops along the way. Jonathan Wacks (Producer of REPO MAN) directs and Graham Greene (DANCES WITH WOLVES), Wes Studi (THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, HEAT) and Amanda Wyss star in this acclaimed comedy/drama about Native Americans understanding the past, fighting for their future and discovering a few surprising truths along the POWWOW HIGHWAY.Bestsellers in DVD
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