Last of the Dogmen [VHS]

Modern bounty hunter Lewis Gates is hired to track down three dangerous fugitives who have escaped into the Montana wilderness. When the fugitives are found murdered, Gates has a mystery on his hands. Accompanied by anthropologist Lillian Sloane, Gates ventures further into the mountains and discovers an isolated settlement inhabited by a Native American tribe thought to have been wiped out by white settlers a century earlier. The two gradually begin to gain acceptance within the tribe, but when Gates' vengeful ex father-in-law, Sheriff Deegan, leads a posse into the mountains, Gates and Sloane must prevent the tribe from being massacred a second time. Written by Ronos

Despite an irritating, tacked-on voice-over narration that somebody must have thought was necessary to make sense of the story (it wasn't), Last of the Dogmen is actually a very moving and magical film. Tom Berenger plays a Montana bounty hunter who helps an anthropologist (Barbara Hershey) search for the descendants of a Cheyenne tribe who disappeared in the 1870s. What the two find in a remote mountain stretch is an entire community of Cheyenne who have kept themselves cut off from the modern world. A Dances with Wolves parallel emerges as the white outsiders gradually fit in, but Last of the Dogmen stands up just fine without comparison to any other films. As in Kevin Costner's Oscar-winning movie, however, there are ways in which this film captures a similar sense of yearning, mystery, and loss. --Tom Keogh