Victor (Adam Beach) and Thomas (Evan Adams) are two young men living on the Coeur d'Alene Indian reservation in Idaho. Their people are poor and ravaged by alcoholism and desperation. Victor learns that his father, Arnold (Gary Farmer), who abandoned the family years before, has died in Arizona, and he feels that it is necessary to go retrieve his father's earthly belongings. He doesn't have enough money, though, so his "friend" Thomas, a shy and socially awkward young man, volunteers to pay for the trip in exchange for the right to go along. Thomas feels a bond to Victor's father, because Arnold rescued the young boy from a fire that killed his parents. Reluctantly, mostly because Thomas annoys him, Victor agrees to the plan, and the two set off on a bus on the longest trip either of them have ever taken.

This is a road movie of sorts, and the two young men experience all kinds of funny and tragic things on their trip. Victor is angry and bitter, and he takes delight in making white people uncomfortable, most notably a young gymnast that Thomas befriends on the bus. There are moments where his defenses lower, such as one hilarious scene where they make up a chant about John Wayne's apocryphal wooden teeth, and another where Victor tries to teach the grinning Thomas how to look fierce. There are problems, too, such as a run-in with some rednecks and a car accident on the way back that lands them in jail.

Throughout the film are flashbacks to the past, when Arnold was still around. He was a drunk, but he was mostly a loving father, although he didn't know how to express it very well. We see the shocking circumstances surrounding the fire that killed Thomas's family, the circumstances that resulted in Arnold's abandonment of his family, and small details of a desperately missed past where Victor had a father. The memories, good and bad, are dredged up even further when they arrive in Arizona to meet Irene (Suzy Wong), who tells the angry Victor stories about a loving, regretful man who wanted to make up for his failings as a father but didn't know how, and died before he could try.

Sometimes you see a movie that affects you in ways that can't really be explained. Roger Ebert has talked about the difference between skillful films and good films. A skillful film is not always a good film, because technical proficiency alone is required to make a skillful film, and technical proficiency does not make up for a lack of humanity or relevance. This film was a good film, if not a skillful one. It wasn't perfectly put together, the actors were sometimes too enthusiastic or not enough... but it really touched me. Perhaps it was the storyline about Victor's father deserting him, but spending the rest of his life wanting to make it up to him and not knowing how. Perhaps it was Thomas' intelligence concealed under too-long stories and an awkward exterior. I dunno. I do know that the movie, especially the end, made me cry more than any other movie I can remember. I watched it again with my mom, knowing that it would make her weep like a baby. There is just something special about this film.