A specimen of Capra-esque populism in minority clothing, to do with a Little Man who won't step aside for the big-shot developers. The impish white-haired angel, for example, is pure Capra-corn (to borrow a coinage from Manny Farber); only the sombrero and serape are impure. Even at that, the regional exotica yields surprisingly few benefits: some Arizona Highways scenery (New Mexican byways, more exactly), some well-weathered faces, a few artifacts of folk religion. It reflects rather badly on the entire project that the vividest characters to emerge are the Anglo interlopers: a field-tripping NYU sociologist, a Sixties activist in semi-reclusive semi-retirement, a hired gun with a cocked Stetson (Daniel Stern, John Heard, Christopher Walken, in order). The whimsical humor, if that's what it was intended to be, dies at the frigid touch of director Robert Redford, very far afield from his first such attempt (no ordinary people here, just the sorts of people who keep a pet pig or silently throw pebbles at pedestrians in the town square). Whenever he isn't able to lean back and appreciate the landscape, Redford appears to find little inspiration or interest in a scene. And during a really hard bit of staging -- like the Little Man's inadvertent shooting of the aforementioned pig, and then, also inadvertent, of its owner -- he practically covers up his eyes. With Chick Vennera, Sonia Braga, Ruben Blades. (1988) — Duncan Shepherd