On an annual medical visit, Blue is told by Dr. Michael Reynolds, a wealthy, materialistic oncologist with a wife and daughter, that he is dying of abdominal cancer and has very little time left to live.

Convinced that he can heal if he gets to a medicine man in Arizona he knew when he was 8, Blue kidnaps Michael, holding him at gunpoint, and forces him to drive them to a nearby garage where they switch cars.

Blue seeks to find Dibé Nitsaa (one of the six mountain lakes sacred to the Navajo people), said to heal the wounds of anyone who swims in its waters.

Michael, however, bemoans his capture to Blue, seeking help to anyone who he comes across and complaining that he is missing out on a dinner engagement for promotion as head of the oncology department.

En route to Arizona, Michael and Blue have a rough encounter with a group of bikers in a small town, and a chase pursues.

As Blue's condition worsens, Michael resorts to illegal means to obtain the needed medicine by breaking into a hospital in Flagstaff.

In 1994, Cimino was approached by Regency Enterprises producer Arnon Milchan to direct The Sunchaser, a script by Charles Leavitt[2] that had been offered previously to Diane Keaton and Mel Gibson.

[5] Parts of the film were shot in Downtown Los Angeles, the Mojave Desert, Arizona, Zion National Park, Utah and Colorado.

[6] To give authenticity to the dialogue, Cimino had several Navajo advisors on set at all times, including actor Leon Skyhorse Thomas, who gave input on the scenes between Woody Harrelson and Jon Seda.

Coincidentally, on his deathbed, Ashby had still believed he could pull through and pondered making a film with similar themes of The Sunchaser, dealing with how he had miraculously cheated death.

Todd McCarthy of Variety wrote, "Michael Cimino's return to filmmaking after a six-year layoff is a conceptually bold tale marked, in its execution, both by visceral intensity and dramatic sloppiness.

"[15] Leonard Maltin gave the film one and a half stars: "Misbegotten mess tries to touch all trendy bases, scrambling American Indian mysticism, 'New Age' theories and buddy-movie clichés into the format of a road movie.

While noting the predictability of the script, Thomas added, "Yet all that's so familiar in Charles Leavitt's script has been given a fresh, brisk spin by the sheer audacity and force of Cimino's style and by an incisive, wide-ranging performance by Harrelson..."[17] On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes, The Sunchaser has a "rotten" approval rating of 17% based on 6 reviews, with an average rating of 4.8/10.