huh I feel this movie was a good depiction of life in a poor small town (having lived in several myself.) I enjoyed that it treated Indians like regular folks just trying to find their place in the world. I am irritated by the person whining about Spike Lee and stereotypes. While Spike has contributed a body of work that provokes, he is not every black man.According to his IMDb bio, Chris Eyre is Cheyenne and Arapaho. Those two tribes banded together with the Sioux to fight Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn or Custer's Last Stand. The reason for the movie's joke about the Crow is because they had been scouts FOR Custer.The point of that history lesson is that Indians are no more homogenized than white folks. To imply that one person can speak for an entire race is just plain asinine.In addition, there is a little bit of truth within every stereotype. Although alcoholism is not unique to Indians, Native Americans, natives, indigenous, aboriginals, etc... (or what ever the correct 'PC' term is this week) and I like how this movie dealt with it. I also especially enjoyed the cowboy boots with the football uniform...

sol1218 ******SPOILERS****** When he was ten years old Rudy Yellow Lodge, Eric Schweig, was stung by a deadly Trickster Spider that would have killed him if it wasn't for his older brother Mogie, Graham Greene. Who carried him to the hospital where the quick attention of the hospital staff saved Rudy's life. From then on young Rudy looked up to his brother Mogie and also felt that he owed him something to repay him for what he did. But as both brothers grew up Mogie, after coming back from the army in the Vietnam War, became a helpless alcoholic with nothing to look forward to but a government check to buy beer and wine. While Rudy became a policeman on the police department of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation where both Rudy and Mogie lived. The Pine Ridge Reservation is a depressing place,in the Black hills on the South Dakota Nebraska border With unemployment among the American Indians there at a whopping 75% with alcoholism nine times higher and life expectancy some 15 years lower then anywhere else in America. This is where the story about the two brothers, Rudy and Mogie, takes place.Rudy trying to do what is beyond his authority as a lawman gives him takes the law into his own hands when a friend of his son, Cokie Red Tail, is murdered. Tracking down Cokie's killers one night, while they were drunk, Rudy breaks their kneecaps with a baseball bat as well as later puts them behind bars.One evening watching TV Rudy sees a news story about a liquor warehouse across the South Dakota border in Nebraska where the Indians of the Pine Ridge Reservation go to buy their booze which is illegal at the reservation. What makes Rudy burn up is when he sees on the TV a reporter interviewing his brother Mogie, who looked very drunk, who was telling him about how he goes there to stock up on his beer. That it was it for Rudy and it was then and there that he made up him mind to torch the place.Disguising himself Rudy goes down to the warehouse and sets it on fire but later as a policeman when he comes over to make out a report and investigate the arson he finds out that his brother Mogie was sleeping upstairs and was badly burned in the fire that he set. At the hospital Mogie was found out that besides being severely burned he was suffering from a severe liver disease due to the years of heavy drinking and didn't have very long to live.Rudy it tears secretly tells his brother that he was the one who set the fire that almost killed him. But Mogie, to Rudy's great relief, took it quite mildly telling Rudy if he wanted to do something to show his outrage at what was happening to his people, the American Indians, why not stick something up George Washington nose on Mount Rushmore.All his sounded pretty stupid to Rudy even though what he did as a vigilante was a lot worse. Later with Mogie looking a lot better Rudy went down to the local hardware store and bought his brother a T-shirt with famous American Indians instead of famous American Presidents on Mount Rushmore knowing that Mogie would get a kick out of it. But when Rudy came back to the hospital room where Mogie was staying he saw his Aunt Helen, Lois Red Elk, and Mogie's son Herbie, Noah Watts, in tears and sadly Rudy knew what happened. Rudy was depressed not only by Mogie's death and by the guilt that he felt by what he did to Mogie by setting the warehouse on fire where Mogie was sleeping in. But by not repaying is big brother for saving his life when they were little boys. Rudy saw that there was only one thing that he could do to square things with his brother and that was what Mogie suggested to him just before he died. So one cold and early morning Rudy with a one gallon can of bright red paint drove down to Mount Rushmore and paid Uncle George a visit.

E.C. Montana (epevae) The story reflects reservation life as it is: sometimes laughter is the only means of survival the people have. It depicts the conditions as they are, not only on the Pine Ridge reservation but on most of them. Graham Greene has given an excellent performance as did Eric Schweig. The special sense of humor, often only understood by the Natives, does not take away any of the gravity of the plot.Chris Eyre has once again managed to produce an excellent combination of the spiritual and the down-to-earth life in SKINS, and he has grown to become a synonym for true Native American films.SKINS is both entertaining and causing the viewer, though mainly those familiar with reservation life, to think about the situation which has been persisting ever since Columbus.SKINS has revived memories of my own stays at South Dakota reservations. The world needs more films like this one so that people will come to understand that the Natives of this land are not living in teepees anymore nor do they wear bunkskin and feathers all day long.SKINS gives a critical and true reflection of life on a reservation in the twenty-first century.

rjv98 A story of survival from America's poorest county and a native American production that's not set in the late 1800's but today. This alone is jarring for the seasoned and discerning cinematic eye. About a Sioux Indian man on the reservation with seemingly few options, who desperately tries to do the right thing for his brother and his community but who's actions send him deeper into despair. To redeem himself includes a symbolic final scene unlike any I have ever seen in film. Film entirely on the Sioux reservation in South Dakota. I can hear John Wayne rolling over in his grave...several times.