Wind River (2017)

Wind River (2017): written and directed by Taylor Sheridan; starring Jeremy Renner (Cory Lambert), Kelsey Asbille (Natalie), Graham Greene (Ben), Gil Birmingham (Martin), and Elizabeth Olsen (Jane Banner): Wind River Reservation is located in Wyoming, though the state is played by Utah in this movie. Fish and Wildlife Service officer Cory Lambert is our protagonist, drawn into the investigation of a murdered female Native American teenager when the assigned FBI agent (played by a game Elizabeth Olsen) requests help in navigating both the social and physical terrain of the reservation and all its wild landscape.

Writer-director Taylor Sheridan (writer of Hell or High Water and Sicario) keeps things terse and taut while also allowing for the Sublime landscape to play a major role in the film. But he's also a sharp observer of human character amongst a variety of laconic individuals and of small moments amongst the landscape. For some reason, a shot of a spider running across the snow caused me to laugh out loud in delight.

The mystery isn't complex. Wind River is more engaged with the sorrow and horror of the murder, and of the plight of the Native Americans in general, and of Lambert's secret (to the viewer) source of sorrow, the last teased out only towards the end of the film. And Jeremy Renner gets to act again. 

And we remember how good Renner was in The Hurt Locker and how misused his talents have been in the Bourne sequel and those three Marvel movie appearances. He's at his best here expressing a sort of stoic pain. Elizabeth Olsen is solid as the fish-out-of-water FBI agent, as are Graham Greene as the tribal police chief and other actors playing police and citizens and oil-camp workers. Wind River isn't a great film, though in a marketplace dominated by bombast and CGI it's refreshing, much like a Junior Mint. Recommended.