Review: 'Drunktown's Finest' gives window into Navajo life

Imagine an indie film about young Native Americans, and you'll quickly come up with the themes running through Sydney Freeland's Drunktown's Finest. There's alcoholism, of course. Poverty and the scarcity of decent jobs. The search for a coherent self-image, particularly in terms of balance between tradition and contemporary Anglo-American mores. Yet Freeland's debut, despite being much more drama than comedy, has an easy approach to its subject matter, producing a film that feels not like a hand-wringing social studies project but a story yanked from the filmmaker's hometown, thrown on screen before its individual dramas hardened into allegories. Commercial prospects beyond Native American communities and urban arthouses may be limited, but on video the film should rank as one of the more effective in its subgenre.

The script revolves around three young people raised in a New Mexico Navajo community; Sick Boy (Jeremiah Bitsui), who has enlisted in the Army to support his family but is at risk of getting booted before basic training; Nizhoni (Morningstar Angeline Wilson), who was adopted by white parents and spent most of her adolescence in faraway private schools; and Felixia (Carmen Moore), a pre-op transsexual who secretly turns tricks while living with her tradition-minded grandparents on the reservation.