Skip to main content

"Wind River" is a Bleak Crime Story With Thrilling Performances By Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen: Review

Image result for wind river movieFilm Review: Wind River


Ah, the kinds of movies Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen can make when they aren't busy playing Avengers. Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch have teamed up for another movie, one that is about as far from a superhero movie as I can imagine; a depressing indie set on an impoverished Indian reservation. Wind River is a masterfully written look at a largely overlooked sector of American life that features several powerhouse performances. From the writer of Sicario and Hell or High Water comes another tale about the intersection of poverty and crime in America.

Image result for wind river movieWritten and directed by Taylor Sheridan, Wind River is a dark crime thriller set on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Jeremy Renner plays Corey Lambert, an agent of the US Fish and Wildlife Service who while hunting for a mountain lion that has been killing livestock on the Reservation stumbles across a dead body lying in the snow. The body is that of 18-year old Natalie Hanson (Kesley Chow), who died after running barefoot in the snow for miles after being assaulted. FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen, also wonderful in an entirely different way in Ingrid Goes West) is called in from Las Vegas to investigate, although only because she was the closest agent to the scene. She's young and clearly out of her element; she arrives in sub-zero temperatures without even a pair of gloves to protect her from the cold. Banner is aware of the slim chance the murder has of ever being solved (drugs and crime are prevalent on the 3,500 square mile reservation) so she enlists the help of Lambert and the tribal police chief played by Graham Greene to track down the murderer.

The actors are great. Renner hasn't had a role this good in years. He plays the hunter hardened by tragedy with empathetic gloom. He plays off Olsen nicely, especially in the scene where Renner opens up to Olsen about his past that serves as a powerful reminder of how great both actors are. Also outstanding are Greene as the deadpan policeman, Julia Jones as Lambert's ex-wife and Gil Birmingham as Natalie's grieving father. Birmingham (also great in Hell or High Water) only has two scenes, but they will be the scenes that Wind River is most remembered for. There's also an extended flashback of Natalie and her boyfriend (Jon Bernthal) that is tender and, ultimately, heartbreaking. 

Wind River is brutal. It's unrelentingly dark, and that will turn a lot of people off from it. But Sheridan is such a great writer that the bleakness is not without purpose. Although Wind River is very much a crime thriller and easily could have fallen into the generic whodunit model, Sheridan fills the film with pointed statements about the conditions of life for Native Americans and the cycle of injustice. One of the first scenes in the movie features of a wolf menacingly staring down a group of sheep on a ranch. The wolf is then shot dead by a character we come to learn is Lambert. In that scene, we learn everything about we need to know about the world of Wind River

As tight as the screenplay is, there was still one specific detail that didn't make sense to me. I can't reveal what it is without giving away the whole story, but it bothered me. Some of the music (the score was by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis) felt too heavy in some of the more intimate scenes of the movie. It also has a pretty conventional way of shooting the snowy landscapes. But this is Sheridan's first time directing one of his screenplays and, with time, he will probably become as sharp in those aspects of filmmaking as he is with his screenplays. 

What did YOU think of Wind River? Let me know in the comments below! Thanks for reading!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Muppets Bring Humor and Heart to the Hollywood Bowl in "The Muppets Take the Bowl": Review

The Muppets are in  a bit of weird situation. Six years ago they made their big comeback with a smash hit movie, but since then they have had another flop movie and a short-lived television show. The franchise is still figuring out what iteration of itself works best for a 21st-century audience, and if it's not movies and it's not TV, what is it? It seems like they are trying to answer that question by putting on a rare live performance, happening September 8-10th at the Hollywood Bowl. Like the good Muppet fan I am, I was on hand opening night in eager anticipation of finding out what a live Muppet show looks like. It looked like, well, what you might expect it to look like. Puppeteers dressed in all black performing their characters right before our very eyes. That is when there wasn't a platform or podium they could hide behind, which there occasionally was during the course of the two-and-a-half hour show. While it certainly isn't how we are used to experienc

"My Mind Turns Your Life Into Folklore": Why Taylor Swift's "Gold Rush" Is a Song About Songwriting

"My mind turns your life into folklore." That line, from the song "Gold Rush," is the only time the word "folklore" is spoken on either of Taylor Swift's 2020 records, Folklore and Evermore , the latter of which is where the song appears. The presence of the line indicates that "Gold Rush" is a pivotal song not only in Swift's lockdown duology, but in her maturation as a songwriter.  Swift's early albums often drew heavily from her own experiences, with fans and the media scouring her lyrics for clues as to which ex-boyfriend her numerous breakup songs referred. Her tumultuous dating life made as many headlines as her music, in part because it informed so much of the music. The discourse was often ridiculous and reductive, and thankfully, that period of her career is over (Swift has been in a relationship with the actor Joe Alwyn since 2016).  Both of her 2020 albums have their fair share of autobiographical songs, but they also see

Every Julie London Album Ranked

Last month, for school I had to write a long research paper about 17th century Flemish flower paintings, which was a bit outside my comfort zone. So, I needed writing music and a lot of it. After listening a bit to Amazon Music's playlist "Big Band Christmas", I came across the song "Warm in December" by Julie London. It was a name I'd heard before, but I knew next to nothing about her. But the song was good enough to send me to Wikipedia, where I learned that London released 30 albums in the 14 years between 1955 and 1969. Most of the material she recorded was standards, the kind I spent most of 2020 listening to, so I decided that listening to London's entire discography (in order) would be perfect for writing my paper. Now, the paper's done ( I got an A), and I'm left with many, many thoughts about Julie London.  A film actress before releasing her first album, Julie is Her Name , in 1955, London had a mega-hit single with "Cry Me a River