Strong and Moving!

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Dear Sean Penn, this is your best film in the role of a writer-director. You got everything right. The film is stylish with some great use of slow motion. The action scene at the beginning of the film was tense and riveting. The film has a great soundtrack including songs by Janis Joplin. The cast which includes Charles Bronson (in a very melancholic role) and Dennis Hopper is stellar. Viggo Mortensen gives the best performance of his career as a violent misfit who cannot seem to get his act together. Patricia Arquette is winsome as his simpleton wife. Mortensen's dialogue about how there is always someone better than you setting new standards, thereby messing up your own attempts to improve resonated with me. David Morse and Valeria Golino are a perfect foil for Mortensen and Arquette's impulsive characters. I am not sure why it is called The Indian Runner. I think it might have something to do with living in an earth alienated culture. The exchange between Frank and Joe about owning farmland and living off it seems to foreground this theme. Joe says "I burned" (when he owned and lived off the land) indicating that he is not entirely happy with his job as a policeman. So that makes this film a prelude to Into The Wild. It was a great directorial debut, Sean. Great work. Best Regards, Pimpin. (10/10)

Whoever doesn't like this film might not understand the influence behind it. I saw this when it came out in 1991 and thought it was a slow, dull, lagging soap-opera. Back then I didn't know much about the art or the business of film. Most "general" movie watchers would not like this film for the same reasons.Then I watched an interview w/Sean Penn and he said his big influence was John Cassavetes, who had recently passed away. So I went back & watched some of Cassavetes' films again. His films were social dramas between friends, usually in New York, struggling with their own inner conflicts. After that, when I watch Sean Penn's first four films (as filmmaker) I can totally see Cassavetes all over his film. Especially Penn's third film "The Pledge." Never has his inspiration been so strong than in the way Nicholson struggled with his demons. But for people who don't understand this, it's just an average, insignificant movie to them.

I don't like Sean Penn's directing very much, and this early work, The Indian Runner, is no exception. The movie has no core, it's colored with a kind of redneck, anti-authoritarian tweeness that in all honesty taints most of Penn's work, his latest work even more so than the earlier. Frank Miller, Robert Rodriguez, Clint Eastwood, Sean Penn, the whole lot seem to produce such fundamentally banal product, ostensibly in some allegiance to honesty, but ending up being, for the most part, glorified pro wrestling matches, and moralistic, almost as if Hallmark cards had developed a line of Hell's Angels greetings, and make me long for the days of Deliverance, which is a fine movie. Viggo Mortensen's acting is much, much more believable here than that ridiculous Eastern Promises thing he did with Cronenberg, and that's about it. The movie is dead meaningless, and seems to be an exercise, a series of techniques, more than a story. Kudos for Charles Bronson, however, who proves he can act. And I wanted more of Sandy Dennis' character. A lousy 3 out of 10 for this The Indian Runner crap.

Greatly enjoyed this film directed by Sean Penn with a great cast of veteran actors and a very interesting story which starred David Morse, (Joe Roberts) who plays the role as a small town chief of police. This film starts off with Charles Bronson, (Mr. Roberts) and Sandy Dennis, (Mrs. Roberts) who raised two boys Joe Roberts and Frank Roberts, (Viggo Mortensen). Frank went to the Viet Nam War and when he returned he met his brother Joe and told him he was not going to live with his father and mother and was going to leave and do just what he wants to do. Frank has some very serious mental problems and gets into all kinds of problems which cause great problems to his mother and father and it makes his brother Joe worry about him all the time. This film had great actors who gave great supporting roles, namely: Sandy Dennis and Charles Bronson. Sandy Dennis gave her last performance in this film and passed away at the early age of 54 years of age after winning an Oscar and appearing in many films and New York City Theater Stage Shows.