The Indian Runner (1991)

Sadly Over-hyped

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The acting in this movie is really good.

I remember my first time listening to Nebraska, the second Bruce Springsteen record I discovered, (after Born to Run of course) laying in my bedroom, imagining each song play out in my mind. That's one of the most appealing aspects of all of Bruce's work, the imagery he projects in your mind. Listening to his music is like closing your eyes and watching a short film play out. One of the most vivid images from the album is the closing verse of the song Highway Patrol Man, from which Sean Penn's directorial debut, The Indian Runner, was inspired.''It was out at the crossroads, down round Willow bank Seen a Buick with Ohio plates behind the wheel was Frank Well I chased him through them county roads till a sign said Canadian border five miles from here I pulled over the side of the highway and watched his taillights disappear.''Penn's film, which he also scripted, begins with the narrator of the Springsteen song, Joe Roberts (David Morse) preparing for the return of his wayward brother, Frank (Viggo Mortenson) from Vietnam. The cast of supporting characters make up the rest of Joe's family, his wife (Valeria Golino) and his Mother (Sandy Dennis) and Father (Charles Bronson). Frank returns for only the briefest of periods and is gone again. A restless soul he returns to the road to keep at bay what he perceives to be the boredom and absurdity of day to day life. Quite like the Jack Nicholson character in Five Easy Pieces, Frankie is never far away from trouble, never far away from walking out on someone important in his life. He eventually returns with a girl, Dorothy (a fantastic Patricia Arquete), who's pregnant with his child. Frankie decides to make a stab at the kind of life his settled brother has established. But his nature is what it is and chaos is rarely far away from the troubled and semi psychotic Frankie.I mentioned Five Easy Pieces before and one of the things that struck me about this film, visually speaking, was that although made in 1991 it looks as if it was made in the seventies, in which it's set. I don't just mean that the car's and clothes are of the seventies, which of course they are. But the film itself looks as it was filmed in the seventies, reminding very me much of something like Badlands or indeed Five Easy Pieces. This is a commendable feat from the films photographer and this aspect gives The Indian Runner and its story a grainy authenticity. The story starts off at a slow pace and in the first half hour I wasn't sure if I was going to like it or not. But Penn gradually pushes up a few gears to tell a painful yet engrossing story about the relationship between these two brothers and how that relationship is defined by their contrasting perspectives of life. Joe is the guy next door, a good man with a wife, a child and a steady job. When Joe is called to use his fire arm in the course of duty he knows he does the right thing but still suffers from the guilt of the action. Frankie is restless and cannot subscribe to Joes happy and settled life. He's a candle burning at both ends and no matter how much Joe tries to encourage otherwise, all Frankie can see is the pain and the negativity in the world. Add to that a venomous temper and Frankie becomes a difficult person to love.Penn accompanies Joe and Frankie with a solid set of fully rounded supporting characters containing just as much depth as the two leads. There's Charlton Heston as Mr. Roberts, Joe and Frankie's father, who plays the angry and somewhat spiteful role with expert subtlety. Patricia Arquette is wonderfully quirky in one of the most intriguing roles in the film, as Frankie's girlfriend, Dorothy. Valeria Golino plays Joe's wife Maria, and their relationship and love appears both genuine and authentic.The Indian Runner starts off slow but it soon enough pulls us in to an absorbing and not so much an expected straight forward story of this brotherly relationship and how our differing points of view can both define and destroy relationships we have in life. It's also a story of trying to help those who cannot and do not want to help themselves which is always a captivating one.

Perhaps it's no accident that Sean Penn would later go on to star in She's So Lovely, a film written by John Cassavetes and directed years after his death by his son, Nick. From just the looks of The Indian Runner (not least of which the dedication to John), Penn is a fan. It's not so much in the camera style, as he's rarely if ever taking a hand-held approach to things or letting his cinematographer be as deliberately all over the place as Cassavetes would allow. But emotionally, it's like a wound slowly opening to reveal itself after the initial shock of glancing at it. It's about two brothers with distinctly different paths in life, but who love each other (at least one clearly does) and can't stand to see how things have gotten so bad. And somehow that Indian Runner, a symbol of a weird kind of pure freedom, is always somewhere around.It's not about plot in any stretch but about characters, plain and simple. With great characters comes everything else that's needed, and here Penn scores as good as he ever has had in his short but rewarding career as director (this goes up there with the underrated The Pledge). We see this story unfold of Frankie and Joe, played by Viggo Mortensen and David Morse, one is a Vietnam vet with nothing to win or lose (until he meets a girlfriend, Patricia Arquette plays her), and the other is a cop happily married with a kid. When Frankie gets in trouble with the law repeatedly- and the two brothers' parents die over a period of time- they try and regroup together back in their hometown. Things have a funny way of not quite working out though for Frank, a loose cannon who ultimately blames the world for his problems. Of course, Vietnam could be enough, but it's never that simple to peg (one thinks looking at their brotherhood that Frank has been this way before, only now it's amplified), and it adds a level of psychotic complexity that, again, calls back to Cassavetes. What is it to be afraid of life, or ready to risk it all, are some questions Penn seriously poses (and leaves open for some answer)? And how does death haunt you if it's close and personal. The opening scene of Joe chasing after a guy and killing him after the other guy shot first, is a key one: he is justified in shooting him, but it's not an easy thing to live with killing another person. Joe knows it, and whether Frank did know it is open to interpretation. But one thing is for certain, which is that walking a fine line between peace and anger is a tough one for Frankie, and Joe has little to do but sit back and watch it unfold.Penn takes care writing all of these characters, not just the two principles but also supporting players like those played by Valeria Golino and, in his last serious part, Charles Bronson (sans beard) as the father, who is shook to the core after the death of his wife. Hell, even bit players get some quality screen time, as one scene with a woman sort of pestering Joe at his work about being available to listen if he needs it, or Dennis Hopper's two brief scenes as a bartender. All of the characters, and subsequently the actors, are given something to do, scene after scene, even if it's something we don't look forward to like Arquette's character screaming every other scene (she probably has the least depth of any character, but then not given much to do aside from being a stay-at-home to-be-mom watching her love go down the tubes mentally). Not every directorial choice made by Penn works, such as the cutaway to the actual 'birth' going on in the climax of the film, but enough are really strong to make it a must-see. It's really his gift in handling actors- even a lessor work like The Crossing Guard has its moments with its players- and here Mortensen is the one that gets to shine completely. Morse gives as good as he can, and it's a performance I won't forget, but Viggo is giving a De Niro Mean Streets kind of turn here, a completely honest and tortured performance of a man who doesn't quite know who he is, but he knows what he isn't which is at peace with himself. It's a sad, awesome portrayal that is as unforgettable as anything he's done in recent memory, Cronenberg films included.

Love him or hate him, Sean Penn demands respect. Acting accolades aside, Penn established himself as a director with immense potential with 1991's The Indian Runner. Channeling the works of John Cassavetes and Bob Rafelson, IR is a complex character study inspired by Bruce Springsteen's "Highway Patrolman." Set in the late 1960's / early 1970's, IR is an homage to American New Wave cinema, a movement that helped revolutionize Hollywood. Penn's nostalgia for what is arguably the greatest decade in American film-making history is undeniable and translates so convincingly on the screen, IR could easily be mistaken for a film made twenty years before it was. From IR's muted palette, it's washed out colors, to the painstaking detail of the production design, Penn managed to craft a near perfect American film.The story of two very different brothers, one calm the other rough, is heartbreaking and emotionally raw. David Morse and Viggo Mortenson who play the two brothers, turn in flawless performances that are tortured, haunting and impossible to look away from. Penn's writing is stark, realistic, subtle and poignant all at once, hinting at the possibility he would help re-establish a lost tradition of small, straight forward, but intellectual complex films. But despite IR being cut from the same cloth as Rafelson's Five Easy Pieces, it proved to be a box office flop, unlike FEP which was a hit in 1970. Perhaps Penn's debut came 20 years too late, long after American audiences had forgotten about the Vietnam War and right after they'd grown complacent with Reaganomics or Bush 1's New World Order. Or perhaps IR was made 17 years too early, where today's climate is as soured by a pointless war as it was back in 1970. Time warps aside, Sean Penn should be respected for writing and directing one of the better American films made in the last 38 years.

THE Indian RUNNER grossed the measly sum of 191,125 dollars at the American box office , a total so paltry that the Japanese company NHK stopped investing in movies . If they managed to lose a massive amount on their investment they only have themselves to blame . Think about it Sean Penn ( Probably best still known as a hellraiser and the ex husband of Madonna ) walks into the office saying he's written a screenplay based on a song by Bruce Springsteen and he needs money to put it into production " What's it about Mr Penn " " It's about a couple of brothers . one's a upstanding cop and the other is a Vietnam Vet " " And this Vietnam Vet suffers from post traumatic stress disorder ? " " Well kind of " " So he goes out and blows away bad guys and his brother tries to find out who this vigilante is and there's a really dramatic scene at the end where the cop realises his brother is a killer ? " " Ugh no . It's not really that kind of movie since the bad brother doesn't do much " " So who are you planning to cast ? " " Mainly unknowns , though Charles Bronson might be in it " " And he blows away scum ? " " No , it's not that kind of film " " Who else " " Dennis Hopper ? " " And he plays a loopy Vietnam Vet traumatised by his experiences ? " " No he plays a regular Joe bar tender . I even wrote four very short scenes specifically so Hopper could get a part . There's no scenes set in 'Nam , it's not like that film where I over acted opposite Michael Fox . Despite everyone smoking you'd never believe it was the late 1960s " " So what else happens Mr Penn ? " " Not much except you get to see a baby falling out of a front bottom at the end of the movie " " And is that it ? " " Yes "" Okay Mr Penn , here's a blank cheque take as much money as it costs to make . Hopefully we can make a tidy profit " It's difficult to imagine how anyone thought THE Indian RUNNER would have been a success . Everything about it is adequate at best but the lack of a strong high concept plot means it was doomed right from the start as a commercial venture and will probably be remembered only as the debut of Penn as a director