The film scrupulously avoids clichés and is tightly edited with nary a wasted moment, yet never feels rushed or artificial in performance or plot. Fish and Wildlife Service tracker and an FBI agent, respectively, attempting to solve the murder of a young woman whose body is discovered by Renner under mysterious circumstances as he patrols the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Wind River opens in theaters on August 4."Wind River" is a gripping murder mystery-thriller written and directed by Taylor Sheridan (Best Original Screenplay Oscar nominee for "Hell or High Water") starring Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen and Graham Greene, featuring an unusually strong supporting cast that includes many fine Native American actors. And Sheridan’s interest in the places America tries to forget - and how local identity and alliances affect the rule of law in those places - makes him a vital filmmaker for America right now. ![]() Still, as a film and as a story, Wind River is a good movie, and very nearly an excellent one. But in this case, it’s of a piece with Wind River as a whole, as well as symptomatic of a larger issue in Hollywood. That’s not Sheridan’s fault, and it wouldn’t be fair to ding him for an industry-wide issue. As I watched, I tried to remember if I’d ever seen a mainstream film set on a reservation that didn’t have white people as protagonists and didn’t focus sharply on rampant drug use or trafficking. That’s a bit jarring in Wind River, a film with many Native American characters (and thus the rare Hollywood movie with many roles for Native American actors). And while there’s no reason to crack a lot of jokes to lighten the mood, it can start to feel like the movie relies too heavily on despair, to the point of capitalizing on its characters’ suffering - and, given the realism of Sheridan’s films, the suffering of people like them. Unlike Hell or High Water, which had its moments of gallows humor, Wind River is deadly serious at all times, with no space for any human connection other than the saddest kind. The score is distracting - at one point employing a male vocalist during a scene that would have been better served with the starkness of silence - but you can get used to it after a while.īut the larger issue is that the trauma endured by the characters is so unrelenting, so utterly bleak, that it risks becoming a caricature of pain. That said, as with the previous two films in this de facto Sheridan trilogy, there’s something a bit off-putting about Wind River. But the film verges on capitalizing too much on its characters’ suffering Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner in Wind River. He writes characters whose attachments to one another and motivations for what they do are deeply emotional - not always a given in thrillers - and give the audience plenty of room to feel empathy, even for those who are clearly in the wrong. His landscapes are starkly beautiful, his actors (especially Renner) seem comfortable and confident in their roles, and his stories are continually surprising and sometimes truly shocking. There is much to admire in Sheridan’s filmmaking, both in his writing and in his direction. People talk about leaving, but they don’t really seem to follow through. Wind River is an admirable, beautifully shot thrillerĪ feeling of deep despair suffuses everyone in the film, all of whom feel abandoned in this remote, forsaken corner of the country, from the young Native American men who’ve turned to drugs to the grizzled, angry white men working and drinking themselves to death nearby. The line between Jane and the locals, though, is hard to miss. ![]() Cory is white, but his ex-wife is Native American and he feels most comfortable on the reservation, with people he’s known his whole life - including the young woman’s father, Martin ( Gil Birmingham), whose grief at the loss of his daughter is immense. Everyone has some deep trauma in their lives. Elizabeth Olsen and Graham Greene in Wind River.īen, Jane, and Cory investigate the murder, and the story unknots itself slowly and a bit painfully. He calls his friend Ben ( Graham Greene), a member of the Tribal Police, to help investigate - and because it’s a murder, the FBI sends an agent, too: Jane Banner ( Elizabeth Olsen), who travels from Las Vegas because she’s the closest free agent. But she’s miles from any structure, and Lambert has no idea how she got there. A local game hunter named Cory Lambert ( Jeremy Renner) is working as a US Fish and Wildlife officer and tracking a lion that has been spotted on the reservation in the process, he runs across the body of a dead young woman ( Kelsey Asbille), barefoot in the snow and showing signs of both beating and brutal rape. Wind River moves these questions north, to a tiny town a few hours from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, near a Native American reservation. Vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark vox-mark
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