Smoke Signals Movie Analysis

We’ve all seen a bad movie at least once in our life. When you’re watching it, it’s everything you can do to keep your eyes open. You’ve also probably seen a lot of really good movies. When you’ve seen an example of both, it is really easy to point out the odds and ends that make each movie good or bad. The movie, Smoke Signals, written by Sherman Alexie in 1998, is not a terrible movie, but it isn’t one I would recommend to all my friends. It’s more of the type of movie I would watch when I exhausted all of my other options. There were a few things about this movie thata caught my attention. The first was the acting. It was probably the best part of the film, closely followed by the script. The main thing that I noticed that ruined this film for me was the use of flashbacks. It was a little excessive and it made it harder for viewers like me to follow along.

Smoke Signals is a movie based on the book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven. The film begins when infants, Thomas Builds-the-Fire and Victor Joseph, were saved from a house fire in the middle of the night on Fourth of July. Victor’s dad, Arnold Joseph, was the hero that saved the boys by Thomas from the window of the burning building. Eventually, his wife kicked him out of the house, where he then moved to Phoenix, Arizona. Years after he left, Victor

hears of his father’s death and needs to find a way to get to Phoenix to retrieve his fathers ashes. For financial reasons, his only option is to take Thomas’ offer and let him buy them the bus tickets for both Thomas and Victor. As the movie continues, the boys talk and we learn more about the characters and the rhythm of the movie.
The characters in a film are everything. They set the tone of the movie by the way they interact, their clothing, and the pride they have in themselves as actors. The actors who played both Thomas and Victor were about as good as they could have been. Janet Maslin of the New York Times, thinks, “The film's serious underpinnings are not obscured by charming, mostly lighthearted performances or by frequent flashes of Mr. Alexie's wry humor. It's as natural as anything else.” The characters in this film have an advantage because it was written by a Native American Indian himself, so Alexie can share his personal experiences with the film producers and help the characters feel like they are more “at home” rather than acting out a scene of a movie about a lifestyle they may or may not be familiar with.
The next best thing about the movie was the script, or dialogue. Being a Native American Indian himself, Sherman Alexie did an amazing job at laying out the script for these characters. He knew typical Indian slang, which made it sound more real and less acted out. It also probably helped the actors get a better feel of their character. In a film review written by Roger Ebert he says that, “the dialogue becomes the heart of the movie,” and this couldn’t be more true. The dialogue says everything about the characters. .” In a scene near the end, Thomas and Victor are on their way back to the reservation and when Victor finally drops Thomas off at his grandmothers, the conversation between them shows a really strong connection with the characters that wasn’t felt at any other time in the movie. It’s important in every movie for the characters to have a bond like the one of Thomas and Victor, Victor and his mother, and Thomas and his grandmother. This helps the viewers to connect with the feelings of the characters.
Characters and their relationships are important, and recapping these moments using flashbacks is okay in some instances, but only when they are used correctly. According to Roger Ebert, “There are a few flashbacks to help explain the older man, and although they're brief, they're strong and well done,” but I disagree. I think the directors of Smoke Signals just added flashbacks just to lengthen the movie. Some flashbacks are understandable. For example, when Victor is in Phoenix gathering his father’s things, the woman at the house was telling Victor about all the times she heard his dad talking about how they used to always play basketball together. Then we see a flashback of him and his dad at a gym playing basketball. However, there others were used inappropriately and didn’t relate to the scene at all. This element of film is important in making sure the viewers are able to accurately understand what’s supposed to be the main idea of the situation.
If you can look past the somewhat poor parts of the film, Smoke Signals, and the fact that it was a very low budgeted movie, it really wasn’t too terrible to watch, although, it is kind of boring.

The producers couldn’t have hired better actors for the roles of Thomas and Victor and the script was as if it wasn’t even a script. It seemed like it just came so naturally to the characters. If someone came to me asking for examples of a movie with really good acting, I would probably recommend this movie, but otherwise. I would say not to waste your time and watch something more enjoyable, like the romantic comedy also from 1998, “The Wedding

Singer.”