Smoke Signals

✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews

Canada, United States

1998

Rated PG-13 · 1h 29m

Director Chris Eyre

Starring Adam Beach, Evan Adams, Irene Bedard, Gary Farmer

Genre Drama, Comedy

Thomas and Victor, two young Native American men, travel from Idaho to Arizona to collect Victor's father's remains. Arnold, Victor's father, saved Thomas from a fire as a baby and left his own family shortly afterward. Victor and Thomas agree on little when they set out, but they have a lot to learn about Arnold's life--and about each other.

Stream Smoke Signals

US availabilities powered by JustWatch

WHAT ARE PEOPLE SAYING?

Be the first to comment about this film.

WHAT ARE CRITICS SAYING?

TV Guide Magazine by

Alexie, who adapted his own novel, bears responsibility for the movie's ham-fisted treatment of racial-identity issues, its tiresome jokes and the dated, throbbing-guitar soundtrack.

Christian Science Monitor by David Sterritt

The movie makes up in sincerity and goodwill what it lacks in originality and style.

Chicago Reader by Jonathan Rosenbaum

Its particularities are the best thing about it.

Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov

The cast is uniformly excellent in their roles, and Eyre's persistent use of long, trailing shots reinforces the story's elegiac tone.

Washington Post by Michael O'Sullivan

A well-crafted story with a unique voice. But its literary gifts are outweighed by its pictorial prosaicness. Dimming the screen in every shot is the unmistakable shadow of the page.

100

San Francisco Chronicle by Peter Stack

Beautiful in both its brevity and its vision of contemporary Indian culture, the film abounds in easygoing humor.

Time by Richard Schickel

A shrewd portrait, sly, casual yet palpably authentic, of the principal ways members of any minority try to respond to an uncomprehending world. [29 Jun 1998, p. 69]

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Takes advantage of the road movie genre, which requires only a goal and then permits great freedom in the events along the way.

Washington Post by Stephen Hunter

And that's the surprise of the movie, beyond even the humor and humanity of its inside look at contemporary American Indian culture. It's really the oldest and most primal story forms, the one about the old man and the boy.

Variety by Todd McCarthy

Breezy, often self-mocking tone proves fresh and invigorating.

Login

Create your account

Reset your password here