This movie was very powerful in the sense that it showed how much as Americans we value real estate. The Devine plan for Milagro was to put up a resort, a lake, and a golf course; and by doing so it had no regards for the native population of Milagro. They had been there for hundreds of years, but the town had changed during that time. In the past years, poverty had become noticeable in their personalities. It had always been their style of life, but now it dictated how people acted. This is a classic example of rich people wanting to buy up all the land, so they offer money to all the land owners to buy them out. As far as who held the key to the plot of the story, it was Sheriff Montoya. Although he was dealing with Ladd Devine, he ended up staying true to his native people by defending them. Twice, he stepped in during life/death situations and prevented total chaos from breaking out. Also, as far as playing their role very well, Christopher Walken did a great job playing Kryil Montana, the loose cannon, stop at nothing, wild-west vigilante out to get Mondragon. It was interesting to see how much pride Montana took in finally arresting Mondragon, but how he still had a level of respect for him when he let him go. Ruby Archuleta was the activist who made this all happen. She took a stand to defend her native people, even when at times, they didn't understand what was happening to them. She got the injustice into the hands of the right man, Charlie Bloom, an ex-lawyer and civil rights activist. He stood up for the town that wasn't even his own and printed the news about everything that was going on. It was interesting to see that some people in the town were willing to let the development happen. The US Forest Service rangers, whose families had been in Milagro all their life, were willing to turn their backs on their people and got paid off by Devine. This created most of the conflict in the movie because the first scene in which people actually pointed their guns at each other involved the rangers. They had taken Joe's cow onto national land, so they could detain it, therefore costing him $100 to retrieve it. Well everyone knew that this was by design, and the old men in Milagro were there to defend Joe all the way. Luckily Sheriff Montoya stepped in, or we would be looking at a whole different plot line. The other incident which made the movie into what it was involved Montana buying up all of Bloom's local papers and trying to burn them. But while this was going on, a gust of wind picked up all the newspapers and spread them all over town for everyone to read. As far as social justice movies go, this would go somewhere at the top of the list. It was a little different than I would have expected, in that I expected Devine to just buy Mondragon out of his property. All Joe was looking for was a decent job to pay off his bills and feed his family, so if Devine was willing to just offer Mondragon a lucrative settlement, then this wouldn't have happened. The only thing that would have made this movie better would to have been to see Bloom go to court as a civil attorney and make the whole state of New Mexico aware of the injustices that were occurring.
Review of The Milagro Beanfield War
