Dustin Hoffman ages from 17 to 121 as the eponymous protagonist of Penn’s picaresque, politically pointed Western adventure. A white man raised by Cheyenne Indians, Hoffman’s Jack Crabb traverses a century of American history, serving variously as a gunslinger, a medicine show huckster, and as a scout for General Custer (of whose famous “last stand” he claims to be the only survivor). Along the way, he toggles between his white and Indian identities as it suits the occasion, bearing firsthand witness to the genocidal tendencies of men of all creeds and colors. Hoffman is in peak form, matched scene for scene by the magnificent Chief Dan George in an Oscar-nominated turn as Crabb’s surrogate Cheyenne father, Old Lodge Skins.
“Arthur Penn's most extravagant and ambitious movie”—Vincent Canby, The New York Times
