In his 9.18.17 review, Indiewire‘s David Ehrlich called Susanna White‘s Woman Walks Ahead (A24, 6.29) “a listless but lustrously shot biopic that suffers from its slippery grasp of history, all of its narrative thrust slipping through the cracks between fact and fiction.

“The scenes between Catherine Weldon (Jessica Chastain) and Chief Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes) are pleasant enough, as both actors have the charisma required to power through the many dull stretches of Steven Knight’s patchy script, which always feels a bit too much like a first draft.

“Would this have been a better film if it didn’t pretend that Sitting Bull didn’t have a wife, erasing her in favor of some unresolved sexual tension? It’s hard to say, but it certainly would have been a more interesting one. As it stands, the two characters form a tenuous bond that the movie doesn’t have the courage to test; we just take it for granted that Sitting Bull should care more for this wayward white lady than he does any of his own people.