Old Magic in New Mexico THE MILAGRO BEANFIELD WAR

By RICHARD CORLISS

The man never emerges from behind the camera, but every frame tells you who directed The Milagro Beanfield War. This movie even looks like Robert Redford: it's smart and handsome, with a crinkly smile around the edges. It boasts wistful vistas and umber landscapes. Clouds stampede over the northern New Mexico terrain, where hillocks perch like adobe huts. The kiss of two fine brown faces is silhouetted by an orange sunset, flaring into sympathetic melodrama. Night falls, and there's a rope of rainbow in the sky; a frosted moon smiles behind a scrim of mist. It makes for quite a pretty show. Nature has rarely gone to the movies in starker, more glamorous clothes.

The film thinks like Redford too: its passionate humanism is laced with wry. For Redford is not only Hollywood's last hero. He is a benevolent movie mogul, using his Sundance Institute to finance noble independent films in the pastoral mode. Alas, most of these films have been lame and prissy. Perhaps one reason Redford made Milagro was to show the young directors at Sundance that a well-meaning film can also be a good movie.

Working from John Nichols' 1974 novel, he has fashioned the imaginary town of Milagro (Spanish for miracle) into a Disneyland with dirt. See the picturesque shacks, the decent people with their ready aphorisms, the general store that sells everything from bullets to Paul Newman's salad dressing. On this sere turf, Hispanics have lived and farmed, have scratched out survival for centuries. And they don't need the white folks' help, muchas gracias. As the town's mayor tells a visiting sociologist (Daniel Stern), "If we don't know it already, chances are we aren't interested in learning it."

His remark applies both to the Milagrans and to the rich Anglos nearby who have plans to turn the area into a resort, complete with ski lodge, golf course, condominiums and a man-made lake. The developers are not interested in the resort's effect on Milagro's ecology and psychology. They are interested in Joe Mondragon (Chick Vennera) though. On a caprice, Joe has irrigated his parched beanfield with water destined for the resort, and now the land barons are flexed to strike back.

These scenes carry hints that Redford wants to update some classic movie parables. Milagro could be Chinatown, with its diverted water supply and political-industrial intrigue. Or Silkwood, with a heroic loner fatally bucking the system. Or The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, with the greedy Anglos outsmarted by wily Hispanic outlaws who snort, "We don't need no stinkin' condos!"

But this is Redfordland, and Milagro is a dream of liberal community. The developers, timid villains in a modern range war, are no match for the villagers. Here comes Ruby (Sonia Braga), the local La Pasionaria, bustling with petitions and '60s rhetoric. Sheriff Bernie (Ruben Blades, who exudes sly star quality) keeps tamping down the hot tempers of the villagers and the Anglos. And Amarante (Carlos Riquelme) fights the scourge with flaming arrows, fish heads and ancient curses. He even fires his pistol at an intruder and drives the developers' bulldozer over a cliff -- though no one in this gossipy town takes any notice of it. Is this old man loco? No, he is on the side of the angels. One angel, anyway: a venerable sprite (Robert Carricart) who plays the concertina, quotes Shakespeare and orchestrates the war like a seraphic Ike.

Milagro marks a brave attempt at a humanist western. It is a genre in which faith and good works reinforce each other, Anglo pragmatism rubs shoulders with Latino magic, and John Wayne might peacefully coexist with Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The spirits may stir up a gust of wind, a kind of Milagro airlift, to bring the good word to town. And a cowboy (James Gammon) with a forbidding face -- you figure him to be the Jack Palance villain from Shane -- may up and save your life. Nobody will get hurt, except in the pride. Finally, the village will erupt into an alfresco fiesta, and the bad cop (Christopher Walken) will smile conspiratorily on his way out of town.

In truth, the ending is a little too happy for this community-action blueprint of a fable. Lots of things are a little too. The actors hold their attitudes a little too long. The resort's temptation for the villagers -- the prosperity it may bring to a distressed region -- is a little too easily shrugged off. After a while even those sunsets numb the unenthralled viewer; he wants to head for Vegas. Milagro is kind to its characters; it works as hard to discover subtleties in their stereotypes as it does to unearth gorgeous new colors in the Southwest palette. But the film remains genially above them, like an Olympian social worker. This humanist western is just too darn nice. It needs to be more butch and less Sundance.