Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) on Netflix
PG-1319931h 55mDramaHistoryWestern
Geronimo and his people settle on a government reservation, where settlers encroach on tribal land. When soldiers attack Apaches worshipping in secret, he leads a small band in armed resistance.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.6/1015,581 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes50%
Trailer
Plot summary
Under the Indian Removal Act the Apache give up their old life and settle on a reservation the American government sets aside for them. Many cannot adapt to farming corn, and the government does not stop settlers from taking the land the tribe was promised. Geronimo, a respected healer, holds out until soldiers and the scout Al Sieber attack a band of Apache found worshipping in secret, and he commits to armed resistance, gathering about thirty warriors into a militia. The army assigns Lieutenant Charles B. Gatewood to bring him in. Gatewood works the country with Sieber and the inexperienced cavalryman Britton Davis, while his superior, Brigadier General George Crook, holds Geronimo in admiration.
Cast
- Victor Aaronas Ulzana
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Geronimo: An American Legend (1993)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
SPOILER
Robert Duvall's character, chief of scouts Al Sieber, was originally meant to survive and ride off at the end, but director Walter Hill decided during filming to kill him off because the movie was running too long. Duvall joked that he might have passed on the role had he known Sieber would die.- The film's narrator, Second Lieutenant Britton Davis, was a real officer who wrote a 1929 memoir called The Truth About Geronimo. The narration borrows his line about the hunt feeling like "chasing a spirit more than a man," but leaves out his memoir's harsher verdict that Geronimo's word was worthless.
- Director Walter Hill said the studio initially pressured him to cast a white actor in makeup as Geronimo, telling him the film would get greenlit if he did it. Hill refused, and by the time production restarted, casting a Native American actor in the role was no longer in question.
- The finished film cuts a real episode in which Geronimo surrendered to General George Crook in March 1886, then got drunk two nights later and fled back into the mountains for a five-month rampage before surrendering again. Screenwriter John Milius said the studio changed it because audiences did not want to see their heroes shown getting drunk and running off.
- To make the vast landscapes feel almost a century old, director Walter Hill combined widescreen photography with long telescopic lenses that dwarfed the human figures, and shot much of the film through tobacco-colored filters, which he said gave scenes a dreamlike, antique look.
