Thanks to Lily Gladstone getting nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Martin Scorsese's Killers of the Flower Moon (2023), the door has been opened for telling more stories about Native Americans or Indigenous people. Taika Waititi's win at the Oscars also opened that door. It allowed Waititi to create the FX series Reservation Dogs (2021), which was about a group of Indigenous teenagers dealing with the aftermath of a teen's suicide. Suicide is a big issue among Native Americans. Gladstone made an appearance in that FX series as a relative of one of the teens.
Another big issue among Native Americans is an epidemic of missing and murdered women. It's an epidemic of this present-day, but, Killers of the Flower Moon showed that it was also an epidemic or at least a serious problem of the past. Scorsese's film wasn't about how the Native Americans really dealt with the losses and how they were affected beyond the emotional reactions. Reservation Dogs was more about how the Indigenous teens dealt with he suicide but more from a comedic standpoint. This film could be seen as a spiritual sequel to Killers of the Flower Moon but one that does center the Indigenous characters and delves more in the aftermath of missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Gladstone stars as Jax Goodiron, a woman living with her sister and niece on the Seneca-Cayuga reservation in Oklahoma. She and her sister are biracial. They have a mother who's Indigenous and a father who is White. For the past two weeks, Jax has been living with just her niece because her sister has gone missing. The sister obviously provided some income. Without her, Jax and her niece struggle for money. This pushes them into petty crimes and possibly some more felonious ones.
A series of circumstances puts the two of them on the run, almost in a Thelma & Louise (1991) kind of situation. Jax goes on the run, a desperate road trip with her niece. There are two parallel and possibly conflicting goals as a result. One goal is solving the mystery of what happened to Jax's sister. Jax becomes somewhat of a detective, trying to pick up her sister's trail. The other goal is to make it to Oklahoma City in order to attend the Grand Nations Pow Wow, a festival of music and dancing for the Native Americans of that area.
Isabel Deroy-Olson in her feature debut co-stars as Roki, the 13-year-old, aforementioned niece of Jax. Roki is in many ways the driving force behind attending the pow wow. Jax hasn't really gone in years for various reasons. However, Roki has gone with her mother annually. When her mother disappears just weeks before this year's pow wow, Roki believes that her mother will be there. Her goal is to try to meet her mother at the festival. The film though is very much a coming-of-age for Roki, as she learns how to survive in this environment, the line between right and wrong, as well as the steps toward womanhood, both physical and psychological.
Jax represents a different kind of woman. She doesn't mind putting on lipstick like her sister, but she's not as feminine or presents as feminine. She also doesn't seem to be as straight. She spends time and is intimate with a female stripper named Sapphire, played by Crystle Lightning (Three Pines). Lightning is part of a supporting cast that is very strong. Shea Whigham probably gets the most as Frank, the father to Jax and grandfather to Roki. Much like Jessica Lange in Losing Isaiah (1995), Whigham's character is caught in the middle of an interracial custody battle that calls into question a lot of cultural issues about what an Indigenous girl may or may not need in terms of their coming-of-age, as well as the laws regarding child protection on reservations or tribal lands.
Just as Killers of the Flower Moon, this film spotlights a lot of incredible Native American actors, including Ryan Begay who plays JJ, the brother to Jax and a member of the Tribal Police, as well as Tamara Podemski who only has one scene as Ricky, but her one scene is very memorable and powerful with just that one moment.
Rated R for language, some drug content and sexual material.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 30 mins.
Playing at the Cinema Art Theater in Lewes.
Available on Apple TV+.