Laikals The greatest movie ever made..!

SanEat A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Teddie Blake The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

P.M Overall, it was a good film. The film portrays the struggles between the American Indians and the white people. It was a sad movie to watch, since the native Indians continuously suffered from many things, and there was no true freedom for them. It was sad to watch Charles being caught up by both sides; the American Indians and the white people. Some main points were briefly mentioned about the different tribes that appeared in the film, but not enough to get a very good understanding about the conflict between the tribes. The film also shows how people are from the opposing sides, and how they feel and act about the situation around the American Indians.

whatalovelypark Looking through the reviews, there seem to be lots of people complaining that this wasn't a $100million 5 part epic with most of the dialogue in Sioux. Still, HBO should be congratulated for simply making this movie.The movie could be best described as informative, about events that probably few people know anything about. It covers quite a lot of territory, and renders it digestible.The movie has the usual TV syle camera methods. The acting is a little wooden, and parts are clichéd. It also tries to include the events, the legal matters, and personal stories, which is always difficult, but succeeds to a reasonable degree. There's a story about a young Sioux man and his white wife threaded in, probably to stop the movie simply being about the Sioux and white bureaucrats and soldiers. But this is the price of getting an audience.Not highly memorable, but informative and interesting. Pretty good, by the standards of television movies of the time. Who knows, maybe by 2100 there will be a film about how the US conquered/stole half of Mexico too.

paul2001sw-1 When the government of America's European settlers defeated the indigenous population, they didn't directly massacre or enslave them (at least, not in every case). The signed a treaty with the defeated Sioux that granted them land, and when they wanted some of this back, offered to pay for it. Senator Henry Dawes, architect of this deal, saw himself as a great friend on the Indians (as opposed to those who considered them sub-human); he was offering them civilisation. However, anthropologist Marvin Harris has suggested that the process of civilisation is not so much progress as a necessary adaptation to shortages of natural resources, especially land, and the truth of this is apparent when considering the Sioux; regardless of whether civilisation was truly in their interests, it was necessary to release their land to those who wished to exploit it. 'Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee' tells the story of this period, and the truth is grim and fascinating; but unfortunately, this is heavy-handed stuff, whose sympathies are always apparent, and marred by wooden acting and lumbering dialogue. In place of naturalism, almost every scene seems specially constructed to demonstrate a specific point of the history; and bizarrely, the story's natural climax is told, not as it happens, but in flashback, squandering the dramatic tension that should have been apparent. Yet in spite of its clumsiness, the film left me wanting to know more of the real history; in that at least it succeeds.

kayaker36 In its depiction of the Native American, Hollywood goes through cycles. This picture comes down in the middle. Neither the uncorrupted pseudo-flower children of "Little Big Man" or "Dances With Wolves" nor the murderous savages of a hundred earlier cowboy and Indian flicks, the Lakota-Sioux are shown here to be victims, to be sure, but in the past they have victimized others and they victimize each other at times as the movie unfolds.The White characters also are shown as very varied in character--some stern but fair, others frankly hostile, most well meaning if ultimately unhelpful. The U.S. Army when it appears is also painted in surprisingly positive colors, the soldiers and officers being courageous in battle, well-disciplined, often compassionate.The attempt to pack in some history lessons does lead to shallow characterizations and stilted wording here and there but the eve of battle parley between the army officer Nelson Miles and the Indian shaman Sitting Bull contains dialog as intense as the Melian Dialogues of Thuycidides, written 2500 years ago. The producers of this picture probably wished to capitalize on the popularity of the Dee Brown book by borrowing its title. There is only a slight connection between the two. That title was not original with Dee Brown, either. It is taken from a poem, written from Europe in the 1920's, about the resonance of American place names.