The Indian Runner

This extraordinary film, a stiletto-edged domestic melodrama that, at different times, evokes the work of Sam Peckinpah, Hal Ashby, John Cassavetes, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and the other, unrelated Penn (Arthur, director of Bonnie and Clyde), is harrowingly honest in content yet lyrically elegiac in style. [21 Sep 1991]

Some of the Indian imagery in the film is arch, but the story, the acting and the tension level are of the highest order. [04 Oct 1991, p.C]

It's impressive, how thoughtfully Penn handles this material. Read full review

Indian Runner, for all its faults, is only half-bad. For an hour or so, the movie may get to you on a scene-by-scene basis. [06 Dec 1991, p.24]

Loose, rambling and sometimes rudderless as it is, The Indian Runner has a fundamental honesty that gives it real substance. Read full review

What actually happens is generally predictable, degenerating into violence as the brothers test each other to the full. But the way the story is expressed is more original, since Penn lingers long enough on his scenes of rural heartland life to get more out of them than would be vouchsafed by your average American family saga. [28 Nov 1991]

It has weak spots, including bits of mystical mumbo jumbo about a legendary "Indian runner" with a ghostly message. But most of the film is articulate and absorbing. Read full review

Though the movie is sometimes too mannered (during one unaccountable stretch, Penn suddenly turns into Diane Arbus and peppers the screen with small-town grotesques), it has an accomplished rhythmic flow, a sense of people’s destinies unfolding step by step. Read full review

It's got flaws, but, more important, it's keenly felt and it boils off the screen with urgency. [13 Dec 1991, p.66]