Wind River

Wind River is the directorial debut of Taylor Sheridan, an actor and writer who penned the screenplays for the tense, atmospheric Sicario and the elegiac Hell or High Water. Wind River mines some of the same territory as Hell or High Water, another story of people in the American west trying to make their way against the unforgiving physical world as well as brutal social and economic circumstances.

 Set in the Native American reservation territory of the title, the film begins with Cory Lambert, a Fish and Game agent, discovering Natalie Hansen, a young Native American woman, dead in the snow of the Wind River range. Clearly, she was assaulted and then ran from her attackers, miles through sub-zero conditions until her lungs burst. It’s a grisly scene and is made worse by the fact that the young woman was a friend of Cory’s deceased daughter.

Jane Banner, the FBI agent called in to investigate, is based in Las Vegas and is unprepared for both the weather and the harsh realities of reservation life. Banner is played with intelligence and toughness by Elizabeth Olsen, and fortunately the film avoids all the easy, romcom, fish out of water jokes that could be made at her expense. It also avoids any romance between her and Cory who is played by Jeremy Renner. Instead, the two behave like professional adults who are simultaneously grieved by the murder and determined to solve it.

Lambert and Banner methodically track the clues back to the site of the Natalie’s attack where a flashback tells viewers how it happened. It is a difficult sequence to watch, and the shootout that takes place following the revelation only provides a glum, sad kind of satisfaction. This is no fist-pumping Death Wish-style revenge drama that glorifies violence and makes viewers feel better about the bad guys getting theirs. On the contrary, Wind River is a very sad film. While there are moments of great tension and it plays like a police procedural, it ultimately is about grief and how to process unimaginable loss.

For a first-time director, Sheridan is very confident. His style is neither showy nor flat. He has a confident, muscular style that compliments the rugged Western landscape where he set his story. The film is a little too slow and contemplative to be considered an action thriller but it’s also a far cry from just being some sad, slow moving indie film about being sad and slow. The sequence when Jane and her reservation sheriff counterpart are sprayed with mace as they try to enter a trailer full of drug addicts is terrifying and tense. The standoff between law enforcement and Natalie’s attackers is chaotic and agonizing. While not a thriller, Wind River has some legitimate thrills.

Jeremy Renner is an actor who sometimes seems bored with his roles but sometimes inhabits them and lives them completely. His performance as Cory Lambert is definitely of the second kind. His performance is organic and, at times, heartbreaking. It is the best performance I’ve seen him give since he first came to prominence in 2008’s The Hurt Locker. 

Elizabeth Olsen’s performance is smart and cagey. She doesn’t make easy, obvious choices and instead imbues her character with a prickly authenticity.  

Of course, there is the subject of having a white male director make a movie with two white leads that’s all about the difficulty of reservation life for Native Americans. The unfortunate fact is that the movie probably wouldn’t have gotten made without Renner and Olsen and that a Native director might not have even made it to a pitch meeting with this idea. Wind River really is a compelling film that moved me immensely. But it does make me hope for a time when a greater diversity of writers, directors, and actors can tell their stories themselves and get equal funding, attention, and treatment as they do so. 

But until that time, Wind River is worth seeing.