Mark Reviews Movies: WILD INDIAN

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Review by Mark Dujsik | September 2, 2021

Writer/director Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr. doesn't need to state the message of Wild Indian, his debut feature. It's built into the very essence of this succinct but surprisingly deep film.

On its surface, the story is something of a thriller, involving a man trying to hide a dark secret from his past and evade the repercussions, should that information come to light. He is not a good man by any stretch of the meaning of that word or the imagination. His secret, after all, has to do with cold, impromptu murder.

We're not meant to sympathize with Makwa, played as an adult by Michael Greyeyes, who looks as if he has something of a perfect life when we meet him some 35 years after the Native American man committed the terrible crime. Beneath that surface, though, rest unspeakable thoughts and impulses. He allows them to emerge occasionally and briefly—although the brevity of his actions is only from his perspective. For the person on the other end of, say, his desire to strangle a complete stranger, there's nothing short about that experience.

A significant portion of the film takes places at some point in the 1980s, when a younger Makwa, played by Phoenix Wilson, is a pre-teen, living in a house on a reservation with his parents somewhere in Wisconsin. He and his cousin Ted-O (Julian Gopal), short for Theodore, go to a nearby Catholic school, where Makwa makes excuses for the regular bruises that appear on his face.

He only tripped and fell, the boy tells the school's attentive priest, who later, during a homily, puts all of Makwa's thoughts and actions in a biblical context. The story of Cain and Abel wasn't just about the origin of murder. It was about resentment and anger, brought about by realizing just how unfair the ways of the world and a higher power beyond human understanding could be.

Makwa has a lot to resent and about which to be angry. His father is abusive, a raging and rage-filled alcoholic, who seems incapable of even standing the sight of his son. The boy's mother doesn't say or do anything about her husband's abuse, and Makwa doesn't say or do anything about it, either. One night, he does grab a knife from the kitchen, sneak into his parents' bedroom, and hold the knife over his father's head. If he was going to do anything in that lowering motion, the only thing that stops him is his mother telling him to leave the room.

That's one of the running concepts here: how much isn't said, how much isn't done, how much is left to fester, and, in terms of the world outside of the reservation, how much is dismissed by way of assumptions or apathy. There are a few moments here, both in the past—before and after Makwa commits his crime—and in the present, in which something could have been said or done to prevent what happened—or what almost inevitably happens in the decades-later fallout of Makwa's crime. The outside world doesn't care, and those who do care inside this world simply know, from generations of experience (as a haunting pair of bookend scenes serve to remind us), that no one who could do anything cares.

The specifics of Makwa's crime will remain unstated here. It is terrible and thoughtless, motivated by a different kind of resentment and envy that seem to define the course of his life. When we meet him again in 2019, it is a bit of shock, considering the gravity of what he has done, to see Makwa playing golf on a fancy course somewhere in California.

He has a career, with a promotion coming his way soon. A co-worker (played by Jesse Eisenberg) refers to Makwa, now known as Michael, as the company's "poster boy." How much weight and history and societal expectation/prejudice are in that mere phrase? How much of that has Makwa internalized to become Michael, with his pretty white wife (played by Kate Bosworth) and infant son? The way this father looks at—or, according to the wife, more than usually doesn't look at—his son raises a question: Does he fear what he'll see in the boy, or does he dread what he'll feel within himself?

Meanwhile, an adult Ted-O, played by Chaske Spencer, is released from prison, after serving a decade for selling drugs. He returns to live with his sister Cammy (Lisa Cromarty) and 5-year-old nephew (played by Tres Garcia), gets a job, and saves enough money for a pickup truck. Ted-O isn't here to start a life, though. He has other plans, involving his cousin's—and, as an after-the-fact accomplice, his own—secret and the cousin himself.

To describe any more would ruin the further shocks of what's to come, as inevitable as they may seem in every moment. That's the strength of Corbine's screenplay, which so strongly marries character and theme, and filmmaking, which takes its time—not only to build tension and suspense, but also to allow faces (Ted-O's great remorse and Makwa's eeriely stone-faced visage) and gestures (The killer, now a father, reaching a strained, open hand toward his son) to say more than any words could. Without the characters or the film itself saying much, this story reveals generations of pain and examines what that can do a single person's understanding of himself and the world.

To be clear, Wild Indian is a tough film in terms of, not only what it explores, but also its elliptical storytelling—how it leaves us with more questions than answers, more doubt than certainty, and more a sense of despair than of resolution. It haunts, as a thriller and, in the particular way this story is one, a tragedy should.

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