THE STOLEN VALLEY - Mark Reviews Movies

The Stolen Valley, Blue Fox Entertainment

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 22, 2024

With ambitions far too large for its melodramatic methods, The Stolen Valley means well but simply isn't convincing in its characters, its plotting, or its messaging. Writer/director Jesse Edwards provides an intriguing premise that revolves around a modern continuation of the exploitation and betrayal of Native Americans, but the movie's more practical aims are so simplistic, while its plot is unnecessarily convoluted, that it feels like a wasted opportunity.

That story follows Lupe (Briza Covarrubias), the daughter of a Navajo mother (played by Paula Miranda) and, according to the mother, a Mexican father who died before she was born. The mother has instilled a sense of her indigenous heritage for all of Lupe's life, believing the culture will only endure if people such as them continue its language and traditions, while living lives that go beyond the world the reservation. Lupe's grandmother moved her family from there when the mother was young, and in turn, the mother set out on her own after the death of Lupe's father.

Indeed, the story is at its best in such quiet moments of contemplation and establishing ideas like these, but they don't last long and become increasingly infrequent as the basic plot takes over the material. Lupe's mother takes ill, on account of yet-untreated cancer, and ends up in a coma. Some family members reveal that Lupe doesn't know the entire truth of her familial history—mainly that her father is still alive, lives on an expansive plot of land, and, because of that, should have more than enough money to pay for the mother's medical treatment. Before she sets off on this journey, the family only asks one thing of Lupe: that she buy a gun for the trip.

This leads to a detour that both distracts from the actual purpose of the narrative and introduces a character who becomes a fifth wheel to the entire affair. She's Maddy (Allee Sutton Hethcoat), a rodeo rider who owes $10,000 to local gangster Antonio (Ricardo Herranz) and just happens to show up in the same shop, which coincidentally is where Antonio runs his business in a backroom, where Lupe is looking for a gun. When the crime boss demands more money from the cowgirl, she fights back, and Lupe ends up an unwitting partner in Maddy's escape.

Why is this character even here? It's a question Edwards can only answer by way of a late revelation that feels as if it's justifying Maddy's existence in the story, and as such, it stretches the already-contrived participation of the character to even more extreme levels of pure coincidence. From here, the story becomes distracted by the women feeling and evading Antonio's henchmen, having them be chased, get into shootouts and standoffs, and, in a particularly odd scene, participate in a dance show at a roadside bar, where a pair of violent gangsters are stymied by an unimposing emcee and, apparently, common courtesy.

What can be said of the character is that Hethcoat makes for a charming sort-of outlaw, who doesn't have a care for anyone because no one has ever shown a care for her. It's telling, though, that Edwards sidelines this seemingly vital character as soon as the two do make it the ranch. There's no better way to determine that Maddy is extraneous to the real goals and plot of this movie than for the filmmaker himself to prove it in such a blatant way.

That real purpose, of course, involves Lupe, her father, the history of this land as a kind of independent colony for Lupe's Navajo family members, and the father's plan to sell the land to an oil company and force the family from it. The father, by the way, is Carl (Micah Fitzgerald), a man who is nothing like the one her mother described, because he is a land-thieving, conniving villain through and through. Fitzgerald offers a unique presence here, as if he stepped through time from the Westerns of old, where the actor likely would have had a solid career playing the leader or the most vicious member of a criminal posse. It's a shame the character acts in such a way that undermines his obvious ruthlessness, because the plot does have to continue, after all.

The rest of The Stolen Valley only has one real aim, which is to build toward a standoff between Carl and Lupe's family. The momentum and believability of it are undone by the return of Maddy and her subplot, the odd convenience of Lupe's mother coming out of and falling back into a coma as is required for some exposition, and a climactic showdown too awkwardly staged to have any excitement. The good intentions here don't mean much in the face of such messiness.

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