TV Reviews : ‘Miracle’ Brings Christmas to Old West

Westerns aren’t often identified with Christmas, but “Miracle in the Wilderness” blends frontier drama with the cultural rebirth of Jesus. It can be seen tonight at 5, 7 and 9 p.m. on TNT cable.

Adapted from a novella by Paul Gallico and starring Kris Kristofferson, the production proceeds from a conventional Wild West yarn to an epiphany shared by unlikely soul mates.

A frontier couple (Kristofferson and Kim Cattrall) are kidnaped at Christmas by Blackfeet Indians. These are not Hollywood Indians but authentically cast American Indians (led by Sheldon Peters Wolfchild’s riveting Chief Many Horses). The warriors speak in the Blackfoot dialect, and their culture, while savage, is not inferior, simply different.

Much of the script lacks momentum, notably the opening, which is nominally enlivened by a wild cavalryman played by John Dennis Johnston. Salvaging the show is its gritty Indian texture (great war paint) as the warriors and their captives trudge up rugged mountainsides.

When the party stumbles upon a miracle of nature--a doe giving birth in the dead of winter--the story takes a major leap of faith, becoming a Christian fable.

Inspired by the deer’s birth in the snow, Cattrall shares with her Indian captors another miracle, Christ’s birth. At first the Blackfoot Chief chuckles--no wonder the white man is loco. Wolfchild’s reactions are wonderful as he visualizes the story in Indian terms.

The scene is not long, but it’s the heart of this gentle Western. If the Christ transformation is a bit hokey, that’s because director Kevin James Dobson and writers Michael Michaelian and Jim Byrnes tell it with a sensibility that is part child’s storybook and part Sunday-school pageant. On the other hand, the image of a Blackfoot baby Jesus is ineffable enough to work on its own terms.