Re-Examining A Great Western Myth

The saga of the great Apache warrior Geronimo has played a great part in the history of the white man’s settling at the American West, though it is a history that for many decades and centuries has been deified beyond all reason at the expense of truth.  The U.S. Army’s attempts at “pacifying” the Apache onto reservations along the US/Mexico border in Arizona during the 1880s led Geronimo on a campaign of getting revenge, a campaign that ended with his permanent surrender and consignment to what the Army hoped would be obscurity on September 4, 1886.  Over the years, the saga has been told both in history books and, inevitably, in movies, with a 1962 version (featuring a rather miscast Chuck Connors as the great Apache warrior) being perhaps the most prominent.  But perhaps the finest retelling could be found through the mind of director Walter Hill (The Long Riders) in his 1993 film Geronimo: An American Legend.

In decades past, particularly if his opponent had been portrayed by someone like John Wayne, Geronimo would be seen onscreen as the villain. But real life rarely ever squared with the Duke's view of the Native American; and it is that fact that Hill and screenwriters John Milius and Larry Gross go after. Jason Patric (as Lt. Charles Gatewood) and Matt Damon (as 2nd Lt. Britton Davis) are the U.S. Cavalry men assigned to bring Geronimo in for surrender upon orders of General George Crook (Gene Hackman), and with help from the expert scout Al Sieber (Robert Duvall). But when the cavalry break up a medicine man ritual on the Apache reservation at Turkey Creek, Geronimo (superbly played by Wes Studi) goes on the warpath. The film concerns itself with the dichotomy that the U.S. Army faced when dealing with the Apache in Arizona during the 1880s. On the one hand, they were the only true protection the Apache had against incoming white settlers who wanted to remove all traces of Native American life from the West; on the other hand, the Army was also being used as a tool by those same settlers.  Such a bind is broken when Hackman’s place is taken over by General Nelson A. Miles (Kevin Tighe), his much more hard-nosed, by-the-book successor who, as Patric learns in a hurry, has no intention of honoring any of the agreements for Apache surrender that the Army has made.

Given both the cinematic reputations of Hill and Milius, both of whom are of the hardened Peckinpah school of Western demythologizing and violence, Geronimo: An American Legend could very easily have been just as violent as, say, other pro-Indian films like Ulzana’s Raid or Soldier Blue.  With a PG-13 rating, of course, such is not the case.  But neither Hill, Milius, nor co-screenwriter Larry Gross shy too far from the historical record that shows the Army/Apache battles were very costly on both sides.  And indeed, like history, the film itself is ambiguous, with that ambiguity represented in Patric’s Lt. Gatewood, who knows Studi well and questions the Army’s willingness to adhere to agreements it signed, which earns something of a questioning from Duvall’s scout in this exchange:

SIEBER: I just think you’re a real sad case.  You don’t love who you’re fightin’ for, and you don’t hate who you’re fightin’ against.
GATEWOOD: Perhaps I could learn to hate with the proper vigor from you, Al.

Soon, even Duvall’s hardened scout comes to see that the White Man’s conflict with the Apache is written not in black and white, but in shades of gray, and sometimes in red blood—and that America’s Manifest Destiny, no matter what John Wayne might have thought, isn’t all he made it out to be.

Hackman and Duvall, not surprisingly, show themselves for the seasoned pros they are; they give their characters the proper vigor.  Patric and Damon, who were all but totally unknown at the time, also show their mettle.  However, it is Studi who gives the film’s greatest performance as the legendary Apache warrior; he is shown as a man of honor who fights only because he has been pushed.  Such was true for all Indian tribes throughout America’s westward migration.  The period score by roots rock musician Ry Cooder also does a lot to add to the atmosphere of the film.

In the end, Geronimo: An American Legend is not a politically correct “revisionist” film, but a probing look at a distorted part of American history that needs to be set straight, and a critique of wrongs against a whole race that have still yet to be righted.  Good filmmaking has proven to be a catalyst for this; and make no mistake, Geronimo: An American Legend is great filmmaking.