Review: Wind River

Snow and silence are all one has on the Wind River Indian Reservation, and in that snow and silence lies the body of a young Native American woman discovered by Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), a wildlife officer whose main duty is to hunt and kill predatory animals. The victim's name is Natalie Hanson - her feet are bare, her lungs burst from inhaling the sub-zero cold, there are signs of rape, and she ran for at least six miles before giving out.

The mystery of Natalie's death forms the crux of Wind River, Taylor Sheridan's second directorial effort (the first being the low budget horror film, Vile), though as with his screenplays for Sicario and Hell and High Water, the thing that defines the genre is not necessarily central to what the film is truly about. Instead, Sheridan uses the genre as a framework to express insightful observations about the landscape and the mentality of the people within that landscape. Which is not to say that he gives the genre short shrift - there are influences here ranging from John Ford and Sam Peckinpah to televised Scandinavian detective thrillers such as The Killing - but what could have been a by-the-numbers whodunit is elevated by Sheridan's inculcated specificities.

Sheridan's screenplays are elegantly constructed, lean but never lacking, and they have a way of rooting themselves within you so that, for example, the exchange between Lambert and Natalie's father Martin (Gil Birmingham) mutates into something more than one man offering cold consolations to another. "The only comfort is getting used to the pain," Lambert tells Martin. Not only do you feel the depth of Martin's loss, but the strong suggestion that Lambert's words are derived from firsthand experience. Indeed, Renner's contained performance is a marvel of calibration as one gradually realises how much of a human hurt locker Lambert is. His personal connection to the crime leads him to help Jane Banner (an excellent Elizabeth Olsen), the rookie FBI agent called in from Las Vegas who may be ill-equipped to handle this frozen tundra of a town and its often narrow-minded inhabitants, but who consistently proves herself to be tougher than she appears.

"This isn't the land of backup, Jane. This is the land of: You're on your own," Tribal Police Chief Ben (the wonderful Graham Greene) says and, indeed, the film is as much about survival as it is solving a crime. Everyone in Wind River is trying to survive - racial discrimination, weather conditions, living with loss and pain, each other - and they don't often have the luxury of letting themselves feel emotions. Which is why moments such as the embrace between Lambert and Martin, Lambert sharing the story of his loss with Jane, and Natalie in bed with her boyfriend Matt (Jon Bernthal) are even more powerful in their quiet and vulnerability.

Sheridan not only succeeds in creating a humanistic drama and a gripping murder mystery, he also crafts some nifty and suspenseful action sequences such as the 10-man Mexican stand-off that is the highlight of the film's third act. Soulful and visceral, Wind River firmly proves that Sheridan's talents lie not only on paper but behind the camera as well.

Wind River

Directed by: Taylor Sheridan

Written by: Taylor Sheridan

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Gil Birmingham, Graham Greene, Jon Bernthal, Julia Jones, James Jordan, Kelsey Asbille