When a pro-government native American is shot dead on the Navajo reservation, the FBI sends Val Kilmer, a part-Sioux white enough to qualify for membership of the Ku Klux Klan, to accompany veteran hardnose Sam Shepard on the investigation, his presence being a sop to the anti-government activists heavily suspected of the killing.
Kilmer begins his detective work by beating up a hippie-haired Navajo biker (Greene) who turns out to be a reservation cop, but as he delves deeper into the predictable web of corruption that surrounds the case he gradually discovers his Native American roots, even having visions of ghost-dancing redskins (either ancestral memories of the Wounded Knee massacre or acid flashbacks to The Doors).
Despite an excellent cast - Kilmer cementing his position as a more-than-just-handsome leading man, Shepard in a sinister rerun of Gene Hackman's Mississippi Burning character, and Greene proving he has a career after Dances With Wolves - this, like the extremely similar The Dark Wind, is one of those films that tries to be a crass thriller and an examination of deeper issues, but is achingly obvious as the former while managing to be pompously annoying as the latter.
Splendid landscapes and interesting faces - the usual virtues of the Western - keep the film burbling along, even as the actual plot is falling apart.