MOVIE REVIEW - Vision Quest of ‘Thunderheart’

Time was when movie FBI men were models of scientific sleuthdom, employing the latest in lab reports to get their men. But if “Thunderheart” is any judge, all that stuff has become passe. The key chapters in a current crime-stopper’s textbook are New Age experiences and ceremonial vision quests. It’s hard to imagine J. Edgar Hoover nodding his head approvingly at that.

“Thunderheart” (citywide), directed by Michael Apted, is a kind of spiritual thriller, a moderately diverting programmer in which a predictable shoot-’em-up plot is slickly intertwined with American Indian religious customs and beliefs. Though the film has a tendency to take itself too seriously, it is enlivened by some appealing acting and vivid camerawork that save it from the abyss.

“Thunderheart” opens with an on-screen message noting that it was “inspired by events that took place on several Indian reservations in the 1970s,” a veiled reference to the controversy surrounding the arrest and imprisonment of American Indian Movement leader Leonard Peltier. And Apted had in fact just finished a documentary on those very events, the soon-to-be released “Incident at Oglala,” when he was sent the script for this film. So, in a situation that will surely titillate cinema graduate students, Apted ended up providing two variations on the same story, one factual, the other fiction.

After beginning with the brisk and brutal murder that no self-respecting thriller can do without, “Thunderheart” shifts to Washington, where eager-beaver (is there any other kind?) FBI operative Ray Levoi (Val Kilmer) is called in to see his boss. It seems there has been a homicide in the Badlands of South Dakota, near an Oglala Sioux reservation. To keep the locals calm, the bureau has decided to send in an agent with American Indian blood and Levoi has drawn the assignment.

Our man is not particularly happy about this. One-quarter Sioux, he has been raised by adoptive parents and always disdained his tribal background. Not to worry, says the boss: “I don’t think anybody is going to be asking you to weave any baskets.”

It turns out there is a lot to worry about in the Badlands. For one thing, Levoi’s superior, the legendary Frank Coutelle (Sam Shepard) is a testy sort who doesn’t like fresh young shavers from the East and thinks Levoi has an uncomplimentary resemblance to the non-macho Sal Mineo.

For another, the reservation is literally an armed camp, with the status quo Guardians of the Oglala Nation (would you believe GOONs for short?) facing off against the militant members of ARM (Aboriginal Rights Movement). Coutelle believes that ARM leader Jimmy Looks Twice (played by a real-life activist, John Trudell) is most likely responsible for the homicide in question, and the two men set out to try to find him.

Though Coutelle would like to forget his existence, there is one more lawman around, and that would be Walter Crow Horse of the local tribal police. As played by “Dances With Wolves’ ” Graham Greene, the long-haired, motorcycle-riding Crow Horse is great fun, a jaunty and amusing character always willing to poke fun at Levoi (whom the locals have taken to calling “the Washington Redskin”) while still turning up clue after clue.

Crow Horse also serves as a bridge between Levoi and other anti-government, pro-tradition tribespeople, including the doe-eyed, Dartmouth-educated Maggie Eagle Bear (Sheila Tousey) and “Thunderheart’s” secret weapon, a wily tribal elder named Grandpa Sam Reaches.

Modeled after an Oglala medicine man who died at age 100 after first befriending “Thunderheart” screenwriter John Fusco, Grandpa is wonderfully played, in his screen debut, by seventysomething Chief Ted Thin Elk. With a face as wrinkled as the Dead Sea Scrolls and a beguiling manner, Thin Elk is one of those natural actors it is always a pleasure to watch, and his homily on the spiritual state of the nearsighted Mr. Magoo is a memorable treat.

Also worth more than a look is the Badlands itself. As photographed by the always-excellent Roger Deakins (“Barton Fink,” “Stormy Monday” and “Mountains of the Moon,” among others), those barren environs of the Dakotas take on an almost ethereal look, a most appropriate backdrop for Levoi’s gradual realization that maybe there is more to this tribal stuff than he at first thought.

What Apted and Fusco have in mind here is a kind of parallel journey: Both Levoi and an audience of equal cynicism are meant to simultaneously come to appreciate the transcendental value of ancient custom and tradition, not to mention its efficacy in crime-stopping and detection.

And, in fact, in its sad pictures of life on the reservation, “Thunderheart” (rated R for language and violence) will no doubt raise some consciousnesses about the dire poverty many American Indians live in. Still, fine intentions do not excuse a too-pat story line or a self-satisfied ending. However, Hoover can certainly rest easy on one point: Despite the evidence here, ritual visions do not look to be a likely replacement for crime labs any time soon.

‘Thunderheart’

Val Kilmer: Ray Levoi

Sam Shepard: Frank Coutelle

Graham Greene: Walter Crow Horse

Fred Ward: Jack Milton

Sheila Tousey: Maggie Eagle Bear

Chief Ted Thin Elk: Grandpa Sam Reaches

John Trudell: Jimmy Looks Twice

A Tribeca/Waterhouse production, released by TriStar Pictures. Director Michael Apted. Producers Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal, John Fusco. Executive producer Michael Nozik. Screenplay John Fusco. Cinematographer Roger Deakins. Editor Ian Crafford. Costumes Susan Lyall. Music James Horner. Production design Dan Bishop. Art director Bill Ballou. Set decorator Dianna Freas. Running time: 1 hour, 58 minutes.

MPAA-rated R (language and some areas of violence).