Masculinity's Last Frontier

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

It's about the last thing you expect to see in the '90s: an old-fashioned cavalry-and-Indian western, not so very different from the kind John Ford and many others used to turn out regularly. All the classic elements are here: a harshly beautiful Southwestern landscape; the eponymous warrior chieftain (Wes Studi), noble, misused and off the reservation because promises have been broken; an idealistic young officer (Jason Patric) who respects his enemy; and a greenhorn (Matt Damon) who wants to learn more about him; an honorable general (Gene Hackman) and a bloody-minded one (Kevin Tighe). There's even a grizzled scout (Robert Duvall), wise in the ways of the enemy.

Above all, this genre is about manliness and different ways of achieving its basic requisites -- honor, stoicism and freedom of movement. Geronimo: An American Legend takes a tragic view of those values. Everyone who tries to live by them ends up dead, imprisoned or disgraced. In that sense, it is very much a '90s movie, a conscious metaphorical backlash against newer, softer definitions of masculinity. Here good soldiers and Apaches are equally the victims of compromising, "civilizing" forces.

Director Walter Hill's combat sequences are short and sharp, but there are not quite enough of them. The script, by Hollywood's last rogue males, John Milius and Larry Gross, devotes too much time to parlay and palaver -- to self-justification, if you will. Depending on your point of view, that's either a necessity or a sad commentary on the state of traditional male ways of being.