WIND RIVER (Taylor Sheridan). 107 minutes. Opens Friday (August 11). See listing. Rating: NNN
Taylor Sheridan, the actor-turned-screenwriter who wrote Sicario and Hell Or High Water, makes his directorial debut with Wind River, another thriller set against an American crisis.
Having tackled the drug war and the economy, Sheridan turns his eye to missing and murdered Indigenous women, and the treatment of Native Americans in rural Wyoming. Sort of.
Wind River is a movie with a mission, a snowbound thriller set in the mountains of Wyoming, where dead-eyed Fish And Wildlife officer Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) partners up with younger FBI agent Jane Banner (Renner’s Marvel Universe co-star Elizabeth Olsen) to investigate the death of a teenage girl on a Native reservation. They will find something very ugly.
Sheridan writes didactic procedurals, using the framework of an investigation to give viewers a tour of an institutional problem, and the gears are showing. Lambert and Banner’s relationship has the same dynamic as that of Sicario’s central characters, and Wind River even cribs a couple of key scenes from that film. But the drive of the mystery and the details of the environment are engaging enough to keep you watching.
Wind River is fine, and occasionally better than fine, especially in its scenes of Lambert at work in the snow. As an actor, Renner really doesn’t get enough credit for his thoughtfulness, and Sheridan makes the most of it here. Olsen is good too, though the script locks her into a mostly reactive role Banner spends most of the picture taking notes and deferring to Lambert’s experience. And Graham Greene, Tantoo Cardinal and Gil Birmingham (who was Jeff Bridges’s partner in Hell Or High Water) are invaluable in key supporting roles.
The structure is solid and the performances unimpeachable, though Sheridan’s a little too much in love with his screenplay, pushing hard to make sure we understand the deep meaning in his dialogue and the way certain characters share an unspoken grief which will, eventually, be spoken about quite a lot. (If Sheridan could have taken a highlighter to portions of one key conversation, I suspect he would have.)
As for the MMIW theme, Sheridan doesn’t want us to miss that, either – though his narrative is told entirely through the eyes of white characters. It’s problematic, as the kids say, but it’s also how you get a couple of Avengers to star in your movie. And that’s where we are right now.
