When Indian Horse opens on a Native family fleeing with white settlers in a canoe, you'd be excused for thinking this takes place several hundred years ago. After his brother dies and his parents leave to seek a Christian burial for their child, Saul Indian Horse and his grandmother struggle to survive the harsh Canadian winter. It's not until a '50s era Ford rolls into the frame that the actual time period becomes clear; this is taking place decades, not centuries, ago.

The shock of that moment is quickly followed by the shocking brutality of the priests and nuns of the boarding school where Saul Indian Horse is taken. These so-called "missionaries" have replaced the love, and grace of the gospel of Jesus with sternness, cruelty and a slavish devotion to their own rules. It's a demonic distortion of what Christianity is really about, but, as many will attest, it's the only version of the faith that many people ever experienced. Children are locked in basement cages for minor rules violations. Growing up this way, one would think God was more like a sadistic prison warden than a loving father. Just being alive and Indian seems to be a terrible sin.

One priest, Father Gaston (Michiel Huismen) sets up a hockey rink for the boys at the residential school. Saul is immediately fascinated by the sport. He teaches himself to skate and practices slap shots with frozen horse manure. As soon as he's allowed to take the ice, he shows that he has the potential to be a hockey star.

At this point, Indian Horse, which has been focused on telling the brutal truth about residential schools, becomes something more like a sports movie, and for a while, things look up for Saul. He loves playing hockey, and he's always the best player on the ice. A surrogate family adopts him and shows him the love and acceptance that was nowhere to be found at the boarding school. The Native hockey team he plays for surprises white teams and their fans with their talent and love for the game, and sometimes they get roughed up by redneck racists after the games, but the sense is that it's bearable because they have each other and they have hockey.

I wouldn't say this is the most interesting sports story ever told. Saul never seems to lose a game or need to learn or grow on the ice, and the way the hockey is filmed isn't terribly exciting or dynamic either. But after the first act at the boarding school, you're just happy to see things going better for Saul.

Then Saul gets recruited by a minor-league hockey team, and he's suddenly surrounded by white teammates and opponents. The only Native people he sees in the big city of Toronto are homeless and are holding bottles in paper bags. He's still the best player on the ice, but even his fans call him "chief" and throw little plastic Indians onto the ice when he scores. Sometimes the approval and adulation of people who don't understand where you come from can be just as hard to handle as their disapproval and hatred.

Saul grows angrier and angrier, drinks more and more, and eventually can't play hockey any more. All his potential has been swallowed by his sadness and despair. I think the movie is making a point here that professional sports, often seen as a way "out" for minority athletes, isn't really a way out of their woundedness, their despair, their pain and anger and loneliness; in fact, being isolated in a world that has no place for them can actually make things worse.

After hockey, Saul becomes a wanderer and an alcoholic until he lands in the hospital, and a rehab center. That's when he comes face to face with the demons that have tormented him and makes a change-he goes back to the surrogate family that loved and accepted him, and as the film ends, there seems to be some hope for his life.

I think Indian Horse makes a powerful and important point of showing us that it's not fame, talent or money that provides Saul a way out of his woundedness and despair; it is the love and acceptance of a family and community.

Cinematically, Indian Horse is pretty basic; it's not likely to win any Oscars for the filmmaking. There are places where it could have used a lighter touch, or deeper characterization; we never feel like we get to know the characters around Saul as much as we'd like to. On the other hand, this is a story that needs to be told, and I'd encourage as many people as possible to see it.

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 100 minutes

Indian Horse

Will Krishchke and

his wife work with InterVarsity in Durango, Colorado, where his wife directs Native Ministries for InterVarsity.