‘Eureka’ Review: No More Cowboys and Indians

In the beginning of “Eureka,” we’re plunged into the Wild West — and it’s pretty much how the movies have always imagined it. A rogue gunman (Viggo Mortensen) hitches a wagon ride into town; unfriendly locals squint at him in a rowdy pub; guns are drawn and brains are blown out.

There’s something overly affected — comically macho — about this standard revenge plot. That’s by design. We zoom out from the black-and-white drama, which is playing on a TV set, and enter the modern world: colorful, yes, but with none of the exaggerated emotions and chest-thumping justice-seekers of the earlier sequence.

“Eureka,” an intriguingly languorous, visually audacious drama from the Argentine director Lisandro Alonso, is about the existential plight of modern-day Indigenous Americans — people too often trapped in the fictions created by others.

In the present, we follow the wonderfully deadpan Alaina (Alaina Clifford), a cop in South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, where the problems far outnumber the staff on the sheriff’s payroll. That’s not to say that Alaina fends off gunslingers — there are missing children, people with intense substance abuse problems; grim realities that feel distressingly typical.

In another plotline, Sadie (Sadie LaPointe), a young woman with a deceptively chipper manner, shoots hoops by herself; visits her cousin in jail; chats with an actress (Chiara Mastroianni) passing through the reservation. LaPointe’s is a beautiful performance: a slight crack in her voice, the flicker of her eyes, conveys the strength it takes to persist — to keep a straight face — within such bleak circumstances.

Ultimately, the film feels a bit misshapen. A third act set in the jungles of Brazil in the 1970s depicts tribe members discussing their livelihoods as gold prospectors encroach on their lands. Here, extra-long shots of wild splendor and oblique talk of dreams makes the film go from patient to listless. At this stage, it’s a challenging sit, but perhaps that’s the point considering where we started.

Eureka
Not rated. Running time: 2 hours 27 minutes. In theaters.