MOVIE REVIEW : A Cool Epic for an Implacable Apache

What becomes a legend most? “Geronimo: An American Legend” (citywide) chooses the path of cool classicism and mostly makes it work. A handsome and respectful Western that wants to simultaneously echo and modernize the myths of the past, it is an impressive piece of work that, perhaps inevitably, ends up being more than a little cold around the heart.

Inevitably, because Geronimo himself was less interested in gaining sympathy than demanding respect and the right to do as he pleased. An implacable war leader of the Chiricahua Apache, he was one of the last Native American commanders to agree to be restricted to a reservation, and when he escaped its confines in 1886--a breakaway that is at the film’s heart--the event made news nationwide.

Director Walter Hill has made Westerns before (“The Long Riders”), but nothing on as epic a scale as this. And it is as a physical piece of filmmaking that “Geronimo” is most successful. Photographed by Lloyd Ahern and filled with gorgeous panoramas that both recall and amplify the Westerns of John Ford (who also shot around Moab, Utah), the film never lets you forget its story’s spectacular scale. And when Hill’s acknowledged facility with action sequences is factored in, “Geronimo” ends up being one of the director’s most impressive films.

As written by John Milius and Larry Gross from a story by Milius, “Geronimo” focuses not so much on one character as several. And though it differs in tone from “Dances With Wolves,” it uses the same device of having a participant/narrator reading from his own somewhat stilted prose to get us into the story.

That would be Britton Davis (Matt Damon), a second lieutenant newly out of West Point whose first assignment out on the Western frontier of Arizona and New Mexico is to assist Lt. Charles B. Gatewood (Jason Patric) in the surrender of Geronimo. A variant of John Wayne’s Ethan Edwards in “The Searchers,” Gatewood is the son of a Confederate veteran, knows heaps about the Apache ways, speaks their language, but also respects them as both fighters and men.

And as played by Wes Studi, himself a member of the Cherokee Nation and memorable in both “Dances With Wolves” and “The Last of the Mohicans,” Geronimo exhibits a cold hauteur that would elicit respect from a stone. A proud man with a hard and arrogant scowl that is authentically frightening, Geronimo ends up taking a liking to Gatewood, for whom he seems to feel a warrior-to-warrior respect.

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The great non-compromiser also admits to a grudging appreciation for two other White Eyes who have long been on his trail, Brig. Gen. George Crook (Gene Hackman) and Al Sieber (Robert Duvall), the sturdy chief of scouts who has not let 17 gunshot and arrow wounds interfere with his soldierly duties.

But though everyone would like nothing more than for Geronimo to spend the rest of his days peacefully growing corn on the Turkey Creek Reservation, that is not to be. The great man gets involved with some subversive ghost dancers and takes off again, and the time is not long before Gatewood is plucked out of the ranks and ordered to try to bring him in.

All this back and forth naturally involves traditional exploits of the hard-riding and deadly shooting variety, and “Geronimo” shows that Hill remains a model where action is concerned. His gunplay sequences are crisp, forceful and to the point, examples, especially in a showdown in a Mexican cantina, of filmmaking that knows enough not to overdo things.

From a thematic point of view, what Hill and “Geronimo’s” writers are after is a melding of traditional themes of fatalism and honor and venerable “Death to all White Eyes / Lieutenant, you have your orders” dialogue with a more up-to-date reading of Western situations that emphasizes the inevitable conflict of cultures and the tragedy of the Chiricahua’s subjugation.

“Geronimo” even manages to be somewhat historically accurate, if you discount the fact that the real Geronimo was in his late 50s or early 60s at the time and looked more like an angry Ross Perot than the magnetic Studi. But it has paid a price for its virtues, and that price is empathy.

For as much as “Geronimo” earns our admiration, it is a difficult film to warm up to. Consciously cool and unemotional in tone, it also has to deal with a performance by Patric, the main audience surrogate, that is more distant than it needs to be and a plot that similarly does not facilitate involvement.

The closest thing to a hero “Geronimo” allows, Patric’s Gatewood, with his whispery Southern accent and brooding demeanor, is irritating in his stoicism when he doesn’t need to be. Though setting out to make a classic is hard to argue with as an aim, getting things exactly right turns out to be a tricky business.

‘Geronimo: An American Legend’

Wes Studi: Geronimo

Jason Patric: Lt. Charles Gatewood

Robert Duvall: Al Sieber

Gene Hackman: Brig. Gen. George Crook

Matt Damon: Lt. Britton Davis

A Walter Hill/Neil Canton production, released by Columbia Pictures. Director Hill. Producers Hill, Canton. Screenplay John Milius and Larry Gross, from a story by Milius. Cinematographer Lloyd Ahern. Editors Freeman Davies, Carmel Davies, Donn Aron. Costumes Dan Moore. Music Ry Cooder. Production design Joe Alves. Art director Scott Ritenour. Set decorator Richard C. Goddard. Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.

MPAA rating: PG-13 for “frontier violence.” Times guidelines: Large numbers on both sides of the fight are killed and wounded in gun battles.