Movie · 1990 · Adventure, Drama, Western · 3h 1m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 7.6/10 (463.3K ratings)
Inside everyone is a frontier waiting to be discovered.
Overview
Wounded Civil War soldier John Dunbar tries to commit suicide—and becomes a hero instead. As a reward, he's assigned to his dream post, a remote junction on the Western frontier, and soon makes unlikely friends with the local Sioux tribe.
Ratings
Curator score: 7.6/10
IMDb: 8.0/10
Letterboxd: 3.91/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 87%
Metacritic: 72
TMDB: 7.8/10
Director
Kevin Costner
Production
Tig Productions, Majestic Films International, Allied Filmmakers
Cast
Kevin Costner, Mary McDonnell, Graham Greene, Rodney A. Grant, Floyd 'Red Crow' Westerman, Tantoo Cardinal, Robert Pastorelli, Charles Rocket, Maury Chaykin, Jimmy Herman, Nathan Lee Chasing Horse, Michael Spears, Jason R. Lone Hill, Tony Pierce, Doris Leader Charge, Tom Everett, Larry Joshua, Kirk Baltz, Wayne Grace, Donald Hotton
Curator Review
Verdict
A sweeping, technically accomplished frontier epic with major visual scale, a memorable score, and a sincere if sometimes overreaching attempt to reframe the Western from a Native perspective. It’s long and occasionally heavy-handed, but the craftsmanship and emotional sweep still make it a significant watch.
Best for
viewers who like big historical epics
fans of classic Westerns with prestige production values
people interested in frontier stories and cross-cultural encounters
audiences who appreciate expansive cinematography and orchestral scores
Skip if
you dislike long runtimes and deliberate pacing
you want a tightly written or understated Western
you’re sensitive to white-savior framing and dated representational politics
you prefer modern revisionist Westerns with sharper irony or ambiguity
Overview
Dances with Wolves is one of the defining prestige Westerns of the late 20th century: grand in scale, patient in rhythm, and built around a deep love of landscape. The film’s best qualities are easy to see. It gives the plains room to breathe, lets the score carry real emotional weight, and stages frontier life with a sense of immersion that still feels substantial.
Worth noting
At the same time, the movie’s reputation has always been tangled up with its politics. It makes a genuine effort to center Lakota characters and critique U.S. expansion, but it also remains firmly anchored to a white protagonist’s spiritual awakening. That tension is part of why the film still invites debate: it is both progressive for its era and limited by the era’s storytelling habits.
Bottom line
Even if you don’t buy into every beat, the film’s craftsmanship is hard to dismiss. Costner directs with confidence, the imagery is often majestic, and the emotional arc is designed for a broad, old-fashioned kind of sweep. It’s an important, sometimes frustrating, but undeniably major American epic.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Matt Singer (2.5★) · 1036 likes
Dances With Wolves? More like slow dances with wolves, amirite?
All right guys, that’s my time! You’ve been a terrific crowd, be sure to tip your waitress and get home safe.
Kevin Pitman (5★) · 819 likes
Wow, this does NOT feel like a 3 hour movie. It seriously feels like 2 hours, max.
The pacing is "slow", but it needs to be, as it pulls us into the landscape, the situations, and the characters before raising the tension. This is a movie that is an experience - it stays with you days later and it makes you think what could have been if we had done things differently when we settled North America. When we finally… more
Will Sloan · 479 likes
Oppressively, exhaustingly well-made. Not a bad movie, exactly, but there are many bad movies I like more. If every shot is beautiful, is no shot beautiful? It's a good bet that Costner's favourite art movement is the Hudson River School. I spent a lot of this movie's runtime trying to figure out why the stunning landscapes in this movie weren't working on me the same way that the ones in Lawrence of Arabia did, and I think it's because there's… more Oppressively, exhaustingly well-made. Not a bad movie, exactly, but there are many bad movies I like more. If every shot is beautiful, is no shot beautiful? It's a good bet that Costner's favourite art movement is the Hudson River School. I spent a lot of this movie's runtime trying to figure out why the stunning landscapes in this movie weren't working on me the same way that the ones in Lawrence of Arabia did, and I think it's because there's… more
luke? (1.5★) · 466 likes
Can't fucking believe Kevin Costner won Best Picture for his self-insert Civil War epic fanfiction