MOVIE REVIEW : ‘Squanto’ an Exceptional Family Film

“Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale” is a stirring epic of survival and self-discovery that culminates in the very first Thanksgiving. It is an exceptionally intelligent family film, mythology painted in broad, action-filled strokes to enthrall youngsters yet boasting a hero plunged into a dilemma with the kind of complexity appreciated by adults. It is a splendid American debut for Swiss filmmaker Xavier Koller, whose memorable “Journey of Hope” won the 1991 best foreign film Oscar.

Legend has it that there actually was a young 17th-Century Massachusetts Indian named Squanto who was captured by English slave traders and taken to England but who somehow made it back to America. In a felicitous blend of research and imagination, writer Darlene Craviotto has Squanto’s tribe extending a friendly welcome to a ship bearing English explorers and traders, only to have Squanto (Adam Beach) and his friend Epenow (Eric Schweig) wind up in irons, bound for Britain, where the proprietor of Plymouth’s shipping company (Michael Gambon) plans to put them on profitable display as subhuman “savages.”

That’s just the beginning of Squanto’s adventures in England, in which he learns both how good and how evil the white man can be; how he sorts out understandably conflicting emotions proves crucial upon his return home. No Native American was ever so noble (or handsome) as Beach’s Squanto, no villain more gleefully nasty than Gambon, yet Koller and Craviotto create a sense of psychological validity in the unfolding of Squanto’s ordeal.

Koller brings to the film the storytelling gifts, the sense of an odyssey unfolding and cultures clashing that characterized “Journey of Hope.”

“Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale” is a big, handsome, energetic picture, with glorious camera work, meticulous period production design and an appropriately stirring score. A Native American with an ingratiating personality, Beach carries the film with ease. Besides Gambon and Schweig, he gets great support from Mandy Patinkin and Donal Donnelly as wise Jesuit priests. We come away from the film with the feeling that Squanto has learned what it means to be a member of a minority, caught up in the unending process of having to take the measure of those who have greater power than you do.

* MPAA rating: PG, for action violence. Times guidelines: It is too intense and brutal for the very young but otherwise fine for children.

‘Squanto: A Warrior’s Tale’

Adam Beach: Squanto Michael Gambon: Sir George Nathaniel Parker: Thomas Dermer Mandy Patinkin: Brother Daniel A Buena Vista release of a Walt Disney Pictures presentation. Director Xavier Koller. Producer Kathryn F. Galan. Executive producer Don Carmody. Screenplay by Darlene Craviotto. Cinematographer Robbie Greenberg. Editor Lisa Day. Costumes Olga Dimitrov. Music Joel McNeely. Production designer Gemma Jackson. Art director Claude Pare. Set decorator Anthony Greco. Running time: 1 hour, 41 minutes.

* In general release throughout Southern California.