Chiefs (2002)

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CHIEFS

Reviewed by Heather Picker

Al Redman has been the Wyoming Indian High School basketball coach for 18 years, and under his guidance the Chiefs have won five state championships. But the last was seven years ago and Redman's ready for his sixth. Along with Owen St. Clair, a former star player who has returned to the Wind River Indian Reservation to serve as Redman's assistant coach, he believes that it's about to happen.

In Chiefs, filmmaker Daniel Junge follows the Chiefs throughout the season, starting with their first practice of the year. "This team has the caliber to get it done this year," St. Clair enthuses, watching them. "They're more athletic than any team we've ever had." We meet the players. They are seniors Brian SoundingSides and Beaver C'Bearing, and juniors Gerry Redman, Tim Robinson, and Al C'Bearing.

The first part of the film focuses mostly on Brian, who is known for his athleticism and tenacity, and Beaver, who is passionate and great with a rebound. Both young men would like to experience life outside the reservation, though they've seen too many others leave only briefly and return disillusioned. For Brian, an athletic scholarship could be his entree to the world outside of Wind River. Beaver's future is more uncertain – he's in danger of not graduating on time, and St. Clair worries he parties too much.

None of this seems to interfere with the Chiefs season. They win their first game of the year 116-42 and remain undefeated after a series of road games that require them to travel more than 2000 miles. It is only when they reach Casper, Wyoming, to play two of the state's biggest schools (one has a student population of 1500 to Wyoming Indian High's 160), that they lose their first game. It is also in Casper that the Chiefs are jeered by the crowd and encounter racism. "We scalped 'em!" someone is overheard yelling during a parking lot celebration. "Back to the rez!" Before following the team back to their hotel room, Junge's camera lingers on a sign just outside – they're staying at a place called the Tomahawk Lounge. Inside, the boys watch a movie about an Indian surrender.

Just as Redman and St. Clair predicted, the Chiefs make it all the way to the state championship. We see the reservation rally behind the team, and catch moments of subtle interaction between the teammates, like the way one of them, nursing a sports drink, looks on in disapproval as confirmed pothead Beaver ducks into a store during a road trip to buy a new bottle of eye drops, which he frequently uses before walking into school. Then, a funny thing happens. The film hasn't even reached the halfway mark when the championship game is over. (You'll have to watch it to see who wins.)

Watching the team's progress and Beaver's home life – he was raised by a single mother and matter-of-factly acknowledges his desire to spend all his time with his "homeboys," driving around and getting high – has been so absorbing that it's jarring when Junge moves on to the next season.

Now the team is lead by the previous year's juniors, the soft-spoken Gerry Redman, the persistent Al C'Bearing ("he always finds a way to score," his coach says admiringly), and Tim Robinson, St. Clair's nephew who is known for his defensive skills. Robinson observes – correctly, from what we've seen – that his class, the class of 2001, is more mature than Brian and Beaver's class of 2000. The three seniors all express a desire to attend college, and they're more interested in helping their parents around the house than partying. Observing a group of teenagers screaming and chasing each other while he's pumping gas one night, Robinson admits to feeling isolated on the reservation because he doesn't like to drink and wants to do more with his life than live off the tribe's per capita allowance and food stamps.

With that we see Beaver at home, taking out the trash and doing dishes. He is temporarily unemployed and living off his per capita. "If I stay around here I'll probably get into trouble or get caught up in some bullshit or something. 'Cause there's a lot of bullshit around here. I might, but I don't know," he says. "I can't tell the future." It is one of the strengths of Chiefs, which originally aired on PBS as part of their Independent Lens series, that Junge continues to chart the progress of Brian and Beaver even after they graduate, rather than relegating them to a few 'update' sentences at the end.

If the first half of Chiefs seemed focused mainly on Beaver and games, games, games, the second half, as it follows the team in Redman's 20^th year of coaching, seems to focus on the home lives of the players and the occasional familial tension between Robinson and St. Clair. (Early in the season, after Robinson is injured in a rodeo accident and has a hard time getting back into the swing of things, he wonders if his uncle is more invested in his playing than he is.) Robinson is featured so heavily, in fact, that we see little of Gerry and the explosive Al C'Bearing, who turns out to be the Chiefs standout player. Equally elusive is coach Redman; we never learn anything about his coaching philosophy other than his belief that teams perform better if they consider themselves family.

By virtue of its subject matter, Chiefs will be compared to Hoop Dreams, the sports documentary to end all sports documentaries (and one of the documentaries, period), and more recent critical favorites like The Heart of the Game. Because each film is about specific personalities and the unique challenges its subjects face, these comparisons can only be shallow in many respects. What you need to know about Chiefs is it's a film all its own, and while at 87 minutes long it's far from a sprawling epic, it introduces us to real people and a real way of life that will stay with you long after the film is over.

About the DVD: Chiefs is new to DVD from Life Size Entertainment. It was given a barebones release, but don't let that deter you from checking it out.

Further viewing: If you liked Chiefs – if you like movies at all – find a way to see David Sutherland's documentaries The Farmer's Wife and Country Boys.

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