Wiseguys discover that their big city smarts are of little use on a Native-American reservation in this offbeat but unsuccessful crime picture.
Stand-up comic Jimmy White Cloud (David Midthunder) gets himself in a world of trouble when he confronts fellow comedian Mitch Brenneman (Nick Shields) about an unpaid loan. Mitch is on the run from the mob: Desperate and deep in debt, Mitch resorted to ripping off a Mafia collection agency and pilfered the gangsters’ accounting ledger as well. Mitch secretly slips Jimmy the ledger shortly before his creditors hound him into a fatal heart attack. As soon as he realizes the importance of the book, Jimmy considers hip options and chooses flight over fight. He hightails it back to the Arizona reservation where he was born and is received warmly by his grandfather, a Shaman, who concludes that Jimmy has the hometown advantage over his pursuers. The mobster badly need the hot ledger to placate investors, and underboss Ray Grazziano (Phil Becker) is assigned to recover it and kill Jimmy. But Grazziano and his men are out of their element on the Piuma Creek Reservation, so they hire local tracker Frank Wilcox (Paul Winters) to get the job done; he in turn employs local mercenaries, including the ruthless Bloody Knife (Mark S. Brien). Wilcox's team kidnaps Jimmy’s estranged father from the local Arrowhead Bar, there's a rude awakening in store when Jimmy and his allies pit their tribal ingenuity against the outsiders' murder-incorporated expertise.
Writer-director Paul Winters' thriller pays lip service to its Native American background, and the performances he elicits range from caricatured to numb, but what's worse it that he pulls back on the action sequences that should give the movie its drive. leave a comment --Robert Pardi
