Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here is directed by Abraham Polonsky who also adapts the screenplay from the novel Willie Boy: A Desert Manhunt written by Harry Lawton. It stars Robert Redford, Robert Blake, Katharine Ross and Susan Clark. A Technicolor/Panavision production, it has music by Dave Grusin and cinematography by Conrad L. Hall.
"In the summer of 1909 a member of the oldest American minority, a Paiute Indian named Willie Boy, became the center of an extraordinary historical event. This is what happened in the deserts of California."
It's a very intense and captivating movie, sad even, it is well performed by the boys up top, beautifully photographed and boosted tonally by a haunting musical score that takes its heart from Jerry Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes, yet there's just something too Hollywood about it that stops it breaking through into a film worthy of the subject matter.
Problem in the main is that in trying to tune into the coolness of Robert Redford, and he is very smooth here, the focus of the film is more on Redford's Sheriff Cooper than it is Robert Blake's Willie Boy. Oh for sure the Willie Boy axis, as he goes on the run with his Indian girlfriend Lola (Ross unconvincing in race terms but emotionally impressive), is explored, but it's Cooper's movie and that just can't be right. The actual facts of the manhunt and its key areas have been cloaked in grey over the years, so the film makers stick rigidly to one of the stories told while dripping liberal messages in and out of the narrative. It's often a fascinating movie with its changing of the times pulse beat, but as much as I was glad I watched the picture, an overriding sense of unfulfillment still leaves me frustrated.
It was well received by the critics of the day, this in spite of director and stars not seeing eye to eye, and it is a decent movie with great values. But it's just not all that it could have been. 6.5/10
"In the summer of 1909 a member of the oldest American minority, a Paiute Indian named Willie Boy, became the center of an extraordinary historical event. This is what happened in the deserts of California."
It's a very intense and captivating movie, sad even, it is well performed by the boys up top, beautifully photographed and boosted tonally by a haunting musical score that takes its heart from Jerry Goldsmith's score for Planet of the Apes, yet there's just something too Hollywood about it that stops it breaking through into a film worthy of the subject matter.
Problem in the main is that in trying to tune into the coolness of Robert Redford, and he is very smooth here, the focus of the film is more on Redford's Sheriff Cooper than it is Robert Blake's Willie Boy. Oh for sure the Willie Boy axis, as he goes on the run with his Indian girlfriend Lola (Ross unconvincing in race terms but emotionally impressive), is explored, but it's Cooper's movie and that just can't be right. The actual facts of the manhunt and its key areas have been cloaked in grey over the years, so the film makers stick rigidly to one of the stories told while dripping liberal messages in and out of the narrative. It's often a fascinating movie with its changing of the times pulse beat, but as much as I was glad I watched the picture, an overriding sense of unfulfillment still leaves me frustrated.
It was well received by the critics of the day, this in spite of director and stars not seeing eye to eye, and it is a decent movie with great values. But it's just not all that it could have been. 6.5/10