by Chris Marshall:
I went into Dances
with Wolves absolutely expecting to hate it. I’ve never liked Kevin
Costner, and nothing about the plot seemed really appealing to me. But then
something happened that I never could have anticipated: it was really good! I
found myself becoming absorbed in the story, and I couldn’t pull myself away.
Costner, who directed and starred in the film, certainly had
some Costner-y moments, but on the whole, he did a fine job as Lt. John Dunbar,
who is eventually given the name Dances with Wolves by the Lakota Sioux tribe
he joins. After the first few minutes of the film, which are preposterous, he
finds his comfort zone, and once he is assigned to his outpost on the frontier,
everything starts to flow naturally.
Because of his courage/stupidity during a Civil War battle,
Dunbar is given his choice of where he wants to be assigned. He picks an
isolated “fort” on the frontier, claiming he wants to see it before it’s gone.
While he’s there, he develops a friendship with the local Sioux tribe and a
romance with a white tribe member (she had been adopted as a child after her
family was killed). When the white men inevitably come to appropriate the land
for themselves, Dunbar, known at this point by Dances with Wolves, sides with
the Indians.
