Skins (film) - Plot Summary

Plot Summary

Rudy and Mogie Yellow Lodge are Lakota Sioux brothers on the Beaver Creek Indian Reservation in South Dakota. Mogie is a severe alcoholic with no job and a high school age son and Rudy is a police officer trying to take care of his brother, nephew and the rest of the town through the hands of law. Rudy tries to help his brother by bringing him food and money and taking him to a picnic, but Mogie is resistant to Rudy's attempts, choosing to drink and make jokes about the depressed state of their people and town. As a child, Rudy had been bitten by a spider, and Mogie told him it was Iktomi, the trickster spider; this spider re-appears to Rudy early in the film and Rudy's attempts to help begin to wander outside the lines of the law.

When Rudy is sent on a police call to an abandoned house, he finds the bloodied, dead body of a young man who has been kicked to death. He sees a person in the darkness, but they run away before he can identify them. Chasing after the criminal, Rudy trips and falls head first onto a rock, knocking him more into the confusion that the trickster spider had started in him as child.

Rudy's friend tells him that rocks are very spiritual and Rudy begins to think that something has gotten into him when he becomes a vigilante. He sees a teenage boy wearing the same shoes as the figure who ran away from the scene of the murder, and secretly follows the boy and his friend. He hears them talking about whether to dispose of a pair of boots that connects them to the murder. Disguising himself with black paint on his face, Rudy sneaks up on the boys with a baseball bat and viciously beats their kneecaps, announcing himself as the ghost of the boy they murdered. Afterwards, while washing the paint off his face, he again sees Iktomi.

Next, a camera crew visits the town to report on the millions of dollars that a liquor store in the bordering town is sucking out of miserable alcoholic Indians from the reservation. The subject of the news report angers Rudy into going to the liquor store in the middle of the night, again with a painted face, and setting the building on fire. He doesn’t realize that his brother is on the roof of the building trying to steal some alcohol. Mogie escapes and survives, but is burned and severely scarred, and spends some time in the hospital. Realizing that he almost killed his brother, Rudy visits a friend to get instructions on how to deal with Iktomi's spirit; these involve a combination of home remedies and a sweat lodge ceremony.

During Mogie’s stay in the hospital, the doctors discover that his health is rapidly deteriorating, including a terminal liver condition. After he is released from the hospital, Mogie, his son Herbie, Rudy, and Aunt Helen have dinner, and Mogie brings up American Horse, an Oglala Indian who testified against the 7th Cavalry. This conversation brings up the story of the Wounded Knee Massacre, which Rudy tells to Herbie.

Wracked with guilt, Rudy tells Mogie that he started the fire, and Mogie replies that the one thing he can do to make up for it is blow the nose off of George Washington's face on Mount Rushmore. Rudy calls the idea crazy, and says he won't do it.

Rudy gets a police call saying that a man is stuck in a trap. He arrives at the house to find Mogie's drinking partner (Gary Farmer) dead, having been caught in a bear trap, with the owners of the house standing over him. The mother of the family (Elaine Miles) says that they put the bear trap out to catch burglars. The family seems to have no remorse for the man's death. When Mogie finds out the story behind his friend's death, he seeks revenge. He goes to the family's house with a gun and aims it at the father while he sits in the living room, but after a child appears in the room, Mogie decides not to pull the trigger.

On Herbie's 18th birthday, he visits his father to find him drunk and in very poor condition. He and Rudy take Mogie to the hospital. Mogie is discovered to have pneumonia, and he must stay at the hospital. Rudy, Herbie, and Aunt Helen stay with him.

Mogie dies, and a ceremony is held. Rudy receives a letter, written to him from Mogie before he died, asking him to take care of Herbie.

Rudy finds out that the liquor store is being rebuilt to be twice as big with two drive-in windows. He buys a large can of oil-based red paint and drives to Mount Rushmore. He climbs to the top, and standing on the head of George Washington, he ponders whether his plan is stupid, but before he can change his mind, he once again sees Iktomi crawling across the paint can. Seeing this, he makes his tribute to Mogie by throwing the can of paint so that it drips down the side of George Washington's nose, almost like a rivulet of bloody tears. On the drive back, he sees a hitchhiker that looks just like Mogie in his youth and laughs.

Skins depicts the bond between two brothers and the effects of the destruction in Native American history on their lives today. Through his sometimes extreme attempts to help his family and his people, Rudy explores his reasons for his actions and the reasons that his people and family are in a condition that needs such help.