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Comedy.... Action.... Drama.... War... and Romance is another great combination in a film top with serious issues. "Little Big Man" starts you off in 1970, with a reporter interviewing Mr. Crabb (Dustin Hoffman, in one of his great performances), the sole white survivor of the Battle of Little Big Horn, a wrinkled visage who is 121 years old at the time of the interview. In the course of his tall tale about the taming of the west, he recounts his career as a Cheyenne Indian, a bible thumper, a snake-oil salesman, a gunfighter, a drunk, and just about everything else one could be in those days. Since he was a white man raised by the Cheyenne, and spoke both languages fluently, he moved back and forth between the two worlds. His story is great when it is being funny. I laughed at the sight of Dustin Hoffman dressed as a gunfighter. He really was the fastest gun in the West, and also the surest shot. Only one little thing kept him from achieving gunfighter immortality. He didn't like shooting at any living things. Thankfully this was produced before the forces of political correctness could bowdlerize it. Today this would be watered down to avoid the epithets and stereotypes that add color and authenticity to this wonderful film. It is a obvious precursor to `Dances With Wolves', but also to a movie where the influence is less patent like `Forrest Gump' where famous persons are infused into a historical comic-drama. Numerous interesting characters infuse the picture: the epicene (though lustful) sister, the wise, yet pixilated Indian grandfather (played brilliantly by Chief Dan George), the unconscionable General Custer, the libertine Mrs. Pendrake (Faye Dunaway) and of course Dustin Hoffman's own character. A funny and sad study of a wild time in history mixed with modern sentiments. A tall tale that resonates with truth.Read full review
This movie has great humor, well done camera work, great cast, and a splendid story. It is one I like to see now and again so bought my own DVD copy. It has a wealth of laughs and I appreciate that especially.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: New
I could write paragraphs about this movie, and still not capture what a truly great experience watching this epic is! It's a great mix of story, with tongue in cheek history, thats probably closer to true than any of us would like to admit. The victors write the history books, and so it is that our barbaric treatment of a great people, with a civilization in many ways was leaps and bounds above our own, was swept under the carpet, finally to be presented in this movie. Hoffman was super in this role, probably his best ever. The screenplay was fabulous, the cinematography excellent. This is without a doubt, one of the greatest films ever made. I highly recommend you watch, and purchase this movie, as you will want to see it over and over again! The WildmanRead full review
I am 54 years young. Remember this movie was released December of 1970. . The movie stripped bare (for the first time to a large audience) the myth that America did what it could, honorably to live on this hallowed ground. The movie takes a white man who was raised by Indians and then, recovered by "white folk" raised by white folk. . and, he ultimately returns to be with the indians. It's not generally known that Benjamin Franklin and the Indians of his time did the SAME EXCHANGE VOLUNTARILY with some 20 young boys. Bostonians "took in" 20 young indians and raised them for five years and the Indians did the same with 20 young white boys. . When these young men became of age, the young Indian men decided they'd rather "go home" to their Indian tribes. The young white boys decided to STAY with the indians. . all of them. This movie moves at a very exciting pace and covers over a hundred years (as told by the old man/Dustin Hoffman). Mr. Hoffman excels at tremendously diverse roles and ages as do the supporting cast, including so many character actors. It's a keeper for the library to be passed on to future generations 5 STAR PLUS Andy RigoliRead full review
Dustin Hoffman made this one of the best flicks ever, for me. He plays someone who, caught between two warring cultures, gains insights that no one from either side could have about the "bigger picture." This was the film that first awakened me to the very awful human toll of the "Indian Wars" on Plains tribes. Unlike "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," produced many years later, it's done as a satire rather than as a sweeping docudrama; also unlike that later production, there's real laughter in presentation of different absurdities in the hypocrisy of those who judged themselves superior to "the Red Man." Anyone with family members or friends who survived the Holocaust will recognize similarities between the lot of the Cheyenne in 19th-Century America and that of non-Aryans in the Third Reich. In some ways, I would compare "Little Big Man" to "Life Is Beautiful," which also made a horrific subject tolerable through effective use of comedy and simple stories about relatively ordinary people. While Dustin Hoffman made me laugh, Chief Dan George made me _think_ and has kept me thinking in the years since I first saw "Little Big Man." His character captures all of the noble people I've known who maintain their dignity under the worst possible circumstances... the individuals whose wisdom and decency ulitimately transcend the power of those who would (and too often do) erase them. In short, this is a movie that will make any caring human being laugh but that will also produce tears. It changed my life.Read full review
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