Review of Last of the Dogmen (1995) by James H — 20 May 2005

[i]Last of the Dogmen[/i] is a movie about a bounty hunter who finds a tribe of native americans living in the Montana mountains living like their ancestors. Then after getting aquainted with them, he decides to keep their exitence a secret from society.

The problem with this story is that it's way too predictable after the first 10 or 15 minutes. The movie starts off with a voice over narration (using a character's voice that's never introduced) explaining about the main character.

(I can't remember his name at the top of my head as I'm writing this). Tom Berenger plays him like a steryotipcal bounty hunter mixed with a bored college proffessor, which is a problem because it makes his character unlikable.

I didn't know anything about the story when I sat down to watch this movie. The first 10 or 15 minutes was entertaining and I thought,"hmm, this a fun and cheesy western. I might be in for a treat." But when he found the indian arrow (more on that in a minute), I felt like I just seen the entire movie.

How's that possible you ask? Like I wrote in the beginning of this review, this movie is too predictable to be enjoyable. I don't mind predictabilty in movies, just as long as everything else is well done, but the amount of negative elements made watching this movie boring.

After finding the arrow, the bounty hunter goes to a female archeoligist and tries to get her to help him find the legendary indians. I forget her name and her true occupation. All I know is that she's in the movie as A) a translater translating the indian language for the bounty hunter, and B) the inevitable love interest for the hero. They're interactions between each other is unconvincing and cliche. Then when journeying through the wilderness looking for the indians, the indians find them. This definately sounds excitting on paper, but on the screen it's unsuspensful and uninvolving, mostly because of the amount of music the filmmakers used and the use of the damn voiceover. The voiceover literatly killed the suspence! Because of that, there was no sense of danger; no exitment; and worse of all: no fun. This is basicly [i]Dances with Wolves[/i] written by 4th graders.

I do admire it's sets and costumes. They were enjoyous to look at and gave more production value than a lifetime movie. I must write about the 10 or 15 minutes before I end this review. The bounty hunter was introduced and he was sent by the sheriff to find three fugitives who hijacked a bus, crashed it, and run into the wilderness. When the bounty hunter was in the wilderness hunting down the fugitives, that was fun entertainment that was worth my time. But when the fugitives were killed by mysterious things (the indians) and the bounty hunter finds the native american arrow, that's when the fun ended.

Do I hate this movie? No, not really. I've seen worse films and I've seen better. I only dislike this film. I thought about giving this film a 5, but that would be being too nice. I then thought about giving this film a 3, but that would be being too mean. So I will settle on 4, since that only means that it's only a bad film but not a awful or a horrible film.