Sioux City (film)
Sioux City is a 1994 American mystery drama film directed by and starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Gary Farmer as Russell White, Tantoo Cardinal as Dawn Rainfeather, and future Touched by an Angel star John Dye as Colin Adams.
| Sioux City | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Directed by | Lou Diamond Phillips |
| Produced by | Brian Rix |
| Written by | L. Virginia Browne |
| Starring | Lou Diamond Phillips Salli Richardson Bill Allen Tantoo Cardinal Gary Farmer John Dye Ralph Waite |
| Music by | Christopher Lindsay |
| Cinematography | James W. Wrenn |
| Edited by | Mark Fitzgerald |
Production company | |
| Distributed by | IRS Media |
Release date |
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Running time | 102 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
It was shot in Santa Clarita, California.
Plot
Dr. Jesse Rainfeather Goldman (Lou Diamond Phillips) is an emergency room doctor living with his adoptive Jewish parents Douglas (Adam Roarke) and Leah Goldman (Melinda Dillon) in Beverly Hills, California.
When a strange amulet of feathers and bones arrives in a box, Leah tells Jesse it's a birthday gift from his biological mother Dawn Rainfeather (Tantoo Cardinal). A note in the box says that Dawn wants to see Jesse for the first time in years. Jesse follows the postmark to the Brown Rock reservation in South Sioux City, Nebraska, where he discovers that Dawn was killed in a recent fire.
At the South Sioux City police station, Jesse's medical training enables him to spot bullet holes in Dawn's body when he sees morgue photos of Dawn's corpse. That quickly lands him in dutch with deputy Russell White (Gary Farmer), but kindly South Sioux City police captain Drew McDermott (Ralph Waite) promises that he'll investigate.
Out on the town, Jesse encounters the kind of overt racism that he never experienced in privileged Beverly Hills. Denied a table in a Chi-Chi's restaurant, he's assisted by young reporter Allison (Lise Cutter), whose invitation extends well beyond dinner.
They return to Allison's apartment, where Allison admits that her father is Drew McDermott, and she informs Jesse that Dawn was rumored to be an alcoholic prostitute. For reasons he can't articulate just yet, Jesse declines Allison's affections.
Snooping for clues, Jesse meets the local medicine man -- his grandfather Clifford Rainfeather (Apesanahkwat) -- and becomes smitten with Jolene Buckley (Salli Richardson), a politically astute Native American woman, to whom he must prove himself.
When corrupt deputies Dan Larkin (William Lawrence Allen) and Ray Dawes (Michael Corbett) start violently harassing Jesse, frictions escalate with Drew, who seems to be dragging his feet on the investigation of Dawn's murder.
Jesse's investigation into Dawn's murder unearths a series of family secrets. Jesse identifies Drew as Dawns's killer, and Jesse's own father, and that means Allison is Jesse's half-sister.
Drew, who didn't love Dawn, had forced Dawn to give Jesse up for adoption when Dawn wanted to keep Jesse. And it turns out that Jolene is Allison's mother.
After Dawes and Larkin are killed, a confrontation between Jesse and Drew takes place, with both Jolene and Allison looking on as Russell arrives and uses a shotgun to kill Drew.