Ray Levoi's Character Development In Thunderheart

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“Thunderheart” is a film released in 1992 and directed by Michael Apted. This film has a lot more going on than what is expected or even seen. On the surface this film is just a mystery about the FBI solving a murder on an Indian reservation, but under the surface it is about someone finding out who he is and who he can trust, whether it’s the way he wants it to be or not. Ray Levoi’s character development throughout this film is ?. At the beginning of this film, the audience meets Ray Levoi and finds out that he is an undercover agent who adapts who he is based on his assignments. However, for the first time he is asked to investigate a crime just being himself. This is hard for Ray because he doesn’t really even know who he is. Levoi is given this assignment because he is half Sioux Indian and his boss …show more content…

We see his trust shift from Frank to Walter. It is clear to the audience who are the bad guys, but to ray it is something that is hard for him to believe. Initially, Ray follows Coutelle 's version on everything, Ray even falsifies a report to keep other officers from knowing the embarrassment of Frank’s injuries when he gets tricked into being bitten by a badger. From the beginning of the investigation, Frank is set on pinning the murder on James Looks Twice, however, the more Ray works with Walter, the more he realizes that Frank is not only looking at the wrong person, he is doing it on purpose. (Walter leads ray to find evidence and finds exactly what he thought happened in the beginning.) By the end of this film Ray becomes somebody that is easy to like once you get under his hard exterior. He accepts who he is and no longer ashamed of being part Native American. At one point Walter says something and ray responds with “They are not my people” which is a complete turn from the beginning when he said Indians weren’t his people to now saying that the FBI were not his