Television Reviews : Unfulfilled Premise in ‘Red Earth, White Earth’

CBS’ “Red Earth, White Earth,” tonight at 9 p.m.(Channels 2 and 8), is supposedly about white farmers in conflict with Native Americans over reservation land. That’s just a backdrop, however, for soap opera with a hint of social conscience.

Timothy Daly is Guy Pehrsson, driving home in his Mercedes to his grandfather’s farm after a 10-year absence. Things have changed. Grandpa (Richard Farnsworth) has had a stroke, the farm is in debt and Guy’s drunken, bitter father (Ralph Waite) is carelessly running things. His mother (Genevieve Bujold), a free spirit and former alcoholic, has moved in with her young Indian lover Tom (Billy Merasty) who was Guy’s best friend.

The good cast has nowhere to go, although Farnsworth is always a pleasure and Bujold, looking too young and fragile even without makeup to be the mother of an adult, has some affecting moments.

Merasty is strong but under-used, a victim of the film’s blurred emphasis. Waite is wholly unsympathetic and Daly’s role is curiously passive. He is not directly involved in the white/Indian conflict, not even as a catalyst.

Dramatic tension unravels as though writer Michael DeGuzman never decided what he was after; director David Greene is left to film a series of scenes that trail off like a forgotten punch line.