Just so...so bad

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Not sure how, but this is easily one of the best movies all summer. Multiple levels of funny, never takes itself seriously, super colorful, and creative.

This is ultimately a movie about the very bad things that can happen when we don't address our unease, when we just try to brush it off, whether that's to fit in or to preserve our self-image.

Skins is director Chris Eyre's follow up to the 1997 Native American film Smoke Signals. Like the first film Skins is a comedy drama that has moments, and is a sound film, but could have done a bit more, and often settles into PC preachiness. One would have hoped Eyre would have matured as a filmmaker in the interim. The main character is Rudy Yellow Lodge (Eric Schweig), a reservation cop on the Pine Ridge Reservation for Oglala Sioux in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He is dissatisfied with his job and life, and even more so with his older brother Mogie (Graham Greene), a stereotypical lazy and drunken Indian, who is a source of embarrassment for Rudy. He is also a Vietnam veteran, haunted by that war, and unable to take care of his teenaged son Herby (Noah Watts). After some violence directed against the tribe Rudy snaps and becomes a vigilante, first brutalizing two teenagers responsible for an attack on another boy, and then setting ablaze a local liquor store he blames for the Rez's woes. Unfortunately, Mogie happens to be sleeping off a drinking binge after breaking into the store, and is severely scarred by the fire, which guts into Rudy. While at the hospital for his fire recovery it's discovered that Mogie has a terminal liver disease. Rudy, in his guilt, decides to live out a foolish act of vandalism, once Mogie dies, as a penance.Overall, the film is solid, but there are times when the lighting and set up of scenes feels very amateurish. The story is rather banal, and dull, but Schweig and Greene, as the brothers, almost make up for that, and Greene is that rare actor who can both play a stereotype and subvert it. Schweig, as Rudy, is also very good, although no credible reason for his mental break is given. The scenes of the men's youth is a place where more could have been fleshed out, and a focus on the brothers, and Mogie and his son, would have been far more effective than Rudy's break. There is also a wasted romance between Rudy and Stella, played by the beautiful Michelle Thrush- an actress who can say more in a silent glance than many can in a two minute monologue. Yet, despite these positives, the film is a bit of a dud. Hopefully, in whatever his third project is, Chris Eyre can put all the wonderful little parts, moments, and performances into a tour de force.

I think this is an exceptional film, with some fine acting. The acting for the most part is underplayed and complicated by some more subtle nuances than many of us are used to seeing. The characters do not woodenly represent good or evil; they often give many mixed messages, and intentions might be good but are provocative to others as well as the audience in the actions shown. Some of the characters are very clear, and quietly and sensitively played. These are not the typical "noble savages" who crowd some Hollywood portrayals; they represent real and suffering people who, each in his or her own way, struggle with inner demons and addictions, like the rest of us, and for the most part try to do the right thing. The characters portrayed who don't seem to care about doing the "right" thing, or care about the rights of others, seem like they are possessed by hopelessness in their destructive actions. They feel trapped in a bleak and seemingly hopeless environment; this is a third-world cultural inside of our very materialistic, greedy American society. The unusual sense of humor, and enduring familial love, and attention to Native American spiritual practices, that come through despite every obstacle, violence, and frustration are the keys here. This film has a different, but intense, cultural point of view that we might be unfamiliar with, but that makes it stark and compelling. The director's commentary and extra features on the DVD are worth listening to/watching as well.

I enjoyed this film a lot. So many times are Aboriginal People shown in the Romantic Period (i.e. prairie bareback horse riding, warriors, etc) It may not be Chris' finest edit, but a well thought out film. The actors did their jobs and the film was made on the Pine Ridge Reserve. It shows both ends of the spectrum when it comes to First Natiosn people. Those effected negatively by the modern world, and those who've overcome it's tragedies.Chris Eyre is great at getting at the truth, many people find some of the content offensive, because it touches home. People have said "this happened to my family," and this is because it has. This is real life.

A story of survival from America's poorest county and a native American production that's not set in the late 1800's but today. This alone is jarring for the seasoned and discerning cinematic eye. About a Sioux Indian man on the reservation with seemingly few options, who desperately tries to do the right thing for his brother and his community but who's actions send him deeper into despair. To redeem himself includes a symbolic final scene unlike any I have ever seen in film. Film entirely on the Sioux reservation in South Dakota. I can hear John Wayne rolling over in his grave...several times.