10 Movie Biopics That Were Far Too Easy On Their Subjects

Don't worry, I was getting to the cannibal.

Sydney Pollack's 1972 revisionist western, with a young, dashing Robert Redford in the lead role was in part based on Raymond Thorp and Robert Bunker's book Crow Killer: The Saga of Liver-Eating Johnson. So when screenwriter John Milius set about adapting the work, it's immediately apparent why a title change was necessary.

I'll let one New York Times critic suss out what's wrong with the script, a work "that tends to be ponderous about its imponderables and that every so often sounds as if it might have been written by the authors of the Bible." Milius and co-writer Edward Anhalt were working with that level of mythmaking.

Pollack's film focuses on Johnson's life after the Mexican War as a mountain man, and his complex feud with the Crow natives. Ultimately, after needless violence, they come to an understanding through the film, with the legend of Jeremiah Johnson overshadowing the actual man portrayed in the film.

But the legend was closer to the truth. Even before his days of liver-eating, he was not exactly a model patriot. His years of service ended after he struck an officer, leading him to desert and change his name.

He was a mountain man primarily because he was an outlaw, and not the fun, Butch Cassidy-type. Hunting and killing Crow natives became a hobby, as was consuming organs.