Powwow Highway

Every December, the Library of Congress selects 25 films to be added to the National Film Registry of films that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". For several years now, TCM has run a night of movies highlighting some of the year's selections. One of the 2024 selections that TCM ran was Powwow Highway. Having never heard of it before, I recorded it to my DVR to watch and put up a post here.

The movie starts off at a reservation of the Northern Cheyenne in Montana. Philbert Bono (Gary Farmer) is a member of the tribe and a dreamer who is only able to eke out a living, likely on tribal welfare from mineral rights. Somewhere on the reservation is a junkyard of old cars. Philbert trades for one of the cars, wanting his "pony". Amazing, the car starts, although it's 25 years old and one wonders how many more miles it's got on it.

Also living on the reservtion is Buddy Red Bow (A Martinez), who seems to have applied himself and gotten a job as one of the people working with the reservation to procure cattle for the tribe. He's also become an activist. A mining company from the white man's world wants to renew the contract to mine on the reservation. They claim it will bring good money, but Buddy doesn't believe a word of this and is the sort of person to agitate against renewing the contract on the theory that it will destroy the land without enriching the people who live there.

Cut to New Mexico, where a lower-class woman is driving with her two children when she's pulled over for ostensibly not having a license plate on her car. She claims to have one (so why wasn't it on the car?), but when the police pop the trunk, they "find" a parcel that is presumably some sort of illegal drugs. This woman is Bonnie Red Bow (Joanelle Romero), the sister of Buddy although they have a strained relationship which is why Bonnie is not on the reservation but down in New Mexico. Still, she needs bail money, and blood is thicker than water. What Buddy doesn't know is that this is a ruse to get him off the reservation before the tribe votes on whether to renew the contract.

Buddy just happens to have the money that the tribe has entrusted him with to buy the cattle, and he thinks he might be able to use some of that to bail Bonnie out. But for some reason he doesn't have a car. Ah, but Philbert does have one. So the two set out on a road trip from Montana to New Mexico. Of course, they've got rather different personalities, and Philbert is more than happy to waylay the two by going off to the Black Hills because the land has religious significance for the Cheyenne. They also waste a bunch of money buying a high-end sound system for the car, and Buddy is too lazy to bother reading the instructions, so he immediately thinks the white guy in the store was scamming him.

Eventually, the two do make it to New Mexico. Getting Bonnie out of jail, however, is going to be an issue because it's the holiday season and the two arrive out of business hours, something I'd think the jail wouldn't really have when it comes to bailing someone out, but then that wouldn't lead to the movie's climax.

Powwow Highway isn't a bad movie, but.... One thing is that if this story were a road-trip movie about a couple of white guys, nobody would remember it and it would never have been selected to the National Film Registry. More importantly, however, is that because of the low budget, there's something missing in the script department I think, leading to the plot holes. It also doesn't help that the two lead characters are not always sympathetic characters, sabotaging themselves by either being irresponsible (Philbert going off to the Black Hills) or jerks (Buddy in the car stereo scene).

Still, as road movies go, Powwow Highway could certainly be a lot worse. It's just that it could have been better, too.