Thunderheart (1992) on Netflix
R19921h 59mCrimeMysteryThriller
Ray Levoi, an FBI agent who is one-quarter Sioux, is sent to a South Dakota reservation to investigate a tribal council member's murder. Investigators have struggled to get the residents to talk.
- Netflix4.0/5
- IMDb6.8/1019,592 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes90%
Trailer
Plot summary
On a Sioux reservation in the Badlands of South Dakota, tribal council member Leo Fast Elk is murdered, a case that falls to the FBI because the land is federal. The Bureau cannot get the residents to talk, so it sends Ray Levoi, a young field agent with some Sioux ancestry, to assist the veteran investigator Frank Coutelle. Tribal council president Jack Milton has brought in an unofficial militia to guard the reservation against Jimmy Looks Twice and his Aboriginal Rights Movement, and Frank's suspect list also includes Maggie Eagle Bear, a schoolteacher and activist. Tribal police officer Walter Crow Horse works the case with the agents. Ray finds his loyalties divided between the Bureau that sent him and the people on the reservation.
Cast
- Julius Drumas Richard Yellow Hawk
- Sarah Braveas Maisy Blue Legs
- Allan R.J. Josephas Leo Fast Elk
- Sylvan Pumpkin Seedas Hobart
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Thunderheart (1992)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- John Trudell, who played an Indian activist suspected of murder in the film, was in fact a Native American activist as well as a poet and singer, and Chief Ted Thin Elk, who played an honored Lakota medicine man, was a Lakota elder himself.
- Apted had previously directed a documentary about a Native American activist episode involving the murder of FBI agents, titled Incident at Oglala, which depicts the indictment of activist Leonard Peltier during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
- Original songs written by musical artists Bruce Springsteen, Ali Olmo and Sonny Lemaire, among others, were used in between dialogue shots throughout the film.
- Filming was done with the support of the Oglala Sioux people, who trusted Apted and Fusco to express their story on screen.
