Movie Breakdown: Wind River (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
Taylor Sheridan – writer/director of Wind River – has been having a pretty good last few cinematic years. He wrote Sicario, one of 2015’s best movies. He wrote Hell or High Water, the best movie of 2016. And now for his directorial debut he’s tackling a murder mystery on an Indian Reservation with Jeremy Renner as an apex-predator hunter who has to find out what happened to a dead girl. To say I am excited is, well, an understatement of mammoth proportions.
Post-Screening Ramble:
Taylor Sheridan has pulled off quite the magic trick with Wind River. The film on the surface has all the juicy details of a strong murder/thriller/crime procedural. Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) is a hunter for the Fish & Game Department in a desolate, weather-beaten small town. On the hunt for a family of mountain lions, he stumbles across the dead body of a girl, miles away from anything. Joined by reluctant FBI agent Jane Banner and an Indian Affairs officer named Ben (Graham Greene), the three must dig deep into the sad state of affairs that are the Native American reservations. As a murder mystery, the film works in spades. Sheridan drags the clues out slowly, pulling his characters deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of politics on the rez, always circling their prey. There are moments in the film – it is violent without apology, and all the better for it – that demand cheering and clapping, as if the audience is seated at a typical action flick and the baddies have just been kicked off a mountain by Sylvester Stallone. At the film’s heart though, is abject sadness. Sheridan does not shy away from the trauma wrought to Native American’s by the institution of reservations. This is a dirty, broken land with a strong people still, somewhat, trying to find purchase. Trying to find meaning, to rise above what’s been taken from them. Every step Lambert and Banner take finds them on another broken edge of the tribal life. Drugs, oil, families pulled apart simply by the destitution forced upon them – it’s not an easy film to watch. Jeremy Renner is a strange actor, one who doesn’t always fit his role particularly well, but here as Lambert, stony-eyed but brimming with emotion, he’s near perfect. A modern day cowboy barely conversational but clearly dangerous and clearly imbued with his own beliefs on right or wrong. Elizabeth Olsen continues her streak of excellence, her Banner an uninitiated newbie, learning as she stumbles along. Graham Greene’s portrayal of Ben is also great, a man without the resources to deal with the shitshow he’s been given. It deserves to be said again: Wind River is not an easy movie. As it shouldn’t be. Sheridan is facing down some of America’s big bad issues, and he doesn’t flinch, dragging the audience down into the grimmest parts of the great country of ours.
One Last Thought:
When does another Taylor Sheridan movie come out?
