Wind River - Review Thread

Over the last few years, Taylor Sheridan has become synonymous with a genre that sadly has become a bit of a rare breed as of late: the adult mystery/thriller. I was a big fan of Sicario in 2015, and while I thought that Hell or High Water didn’t reach those suspenseful heights it had a lot to offer as well. Sheridan wrote those, but for his latest script he’s seated himself into the director’s chair for Wind River. Though Wind River doesn’t contain the white-knuckle suspense and big action pieces that Sicario and Hell or High Water did, it’s still very much cut from Sheridan’s writing cloth in exploring more than just the mystery by delving into characters that have become products of the environment they find themselves in. Unfortunately, Wind River is a pretty forgettable film despite being well made and well directed. I’m a huge fan of this genre and believe it’s one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult, to effectively pull off. Not every script needs to be a Seven, but it takes a lot of skill to craft a mystery that demands repeat viewings and insight after the reveal. Wind River doesn’t succeed in this and disappointingly resorts to simple conventionalism to tell its story and craft its characters, and to put it bluntly we expect more from Sheridan.

The film focuses on Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), a hunter in Wyoming who lives on the outskirts of the Wind River Native American reservation. While tracking some mountain lions, Lambert stumbles upon a frozen body of Natalie (Kelsey Asbille), the daughter of one of his close friends. She’s barefoot and appears to have ran for miles, though from what we can’t be immediately sure. FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) later arrives to the scene and instantly declares this a homicide investigation. She’s from Florida, though is now stationed in Las Vegas, and is certainly out of her element in snowy, rural Wyoming. Banner is the only FBI agent sent to check the incident out, and she quickly finds that despite being FBI there are numerous hoops to jump through jurisdiction wise with this death occurring on Native American land. Though few people live in the area, there’s a seemingly endless amount of ground to cover. Lambert agrees to help, feeling a sense of duty to his friend and also to reconcile the loss of his own daughter to this harsh landscape some years prior, and the two set off to unravel who killed Natalie and why.

I’ll preface my criticisms of Wind River by stating that I know I’m in the minority here. The film currently sits at a highly respectable 87% on Rotten Tomatoes, and from a directing standpoint it’s a mature film that eschews throwing ridiculous red herrings and twists at the audience in favor of realistic police work and a slow feed of information. Wind River treats its audience with respect and intelligence, and I want more of these type of mature works to fill theaters to replace the seemingly endless barrage of brainless “cinema” that we mostly receive. That being said, I found Wind River to be the type of film that not only won’t hold much merit on repeat viewings in regards to its story and characters but also one that doesn’t pack much of a punch on the initial viewing either. A script like this shouldn’t necessarily be putting all of its eggs into the basket of its reveal, but a thriller’s most essential component is undoubtedly its script and movies within the genre are made and broken by not shoring itself up beyond its initial premise. This is how I felt about Wind River. The twist is revealed not through meticulous clue gathering or a second look at something not seen before, but a flashback. Yes, a flashback. This to me was a complete cop-out that made our time moving towards this reveal almost totally wasted. For a movie that personifies a diligent and mature approach to its subject matter, to clean up any and all ambiguities and suspense with a flashback that of course only the audience views feels cheap. It’s like if in Chinatown we get a flashback of Mr. Mulwray being murdered and seeing who did it at the end instead of Gittes confronting the assailant. Sheridan plays his entire hand in uninspired fashion, and from there nothing is left to sort through. If all mysteries were solved with flashbacks or dream sequences or blatant expositional dialogue, we’d be outraged. I wouldn’t say I felt that upset about the ending of the film, but I can’t say I was impressed.

Also disappointing is the potential ethics and storylines that aren’t explored. There’s a lot of interesting angles that Sheridan can play at but doesn’t and instead just elects for pure conventionalism all around. Banner is the “fish out of water” cop, the big city FBI agent now dealing with small town police work. Lambert is the grieving father who spills his heart out to Banner in a blatantly expositional scene that serves no other purpose and isn’t established narratively at all. The landscape has a bleakness to it that’s hardened and molded its citizens much like in Sicario and Hell or High Water, yet for being a film that takes place on a Native American reservation we get little to no insight into this group of neglected people and how that neglect has shaped their disdain for outside help and hopelessness. Maybe I just expected that element to play a larger role in the film; there could be secrets deep within this community that intertwine the murder and the social commentary that would push this film the way Sheridan’s two previous efforts did. But none of that is there. It just feels like a real missed opportunity. The characters themselves, for the most part, aren’t cut-outs and aren’t exact stereotypes, but Sheridan does little to display them as much more either. Everything is too simple and too neat, and shouldn’t the lesson we learn coincide with the idea that’s been peddled to us throughout the film, that there are a different set of rules and cruelty out here? It’s difficult to let Sheridan off the hook since this is his bread and butter. We’ve seen better from Sheridan, and thus we expect better.

Despite my criticisms of the film, I do not find the film to be bad or even mediocre. The cast does a great job, the directing is solid, and we’re treated to a couple of pretty spectacular shoot out sequences that don’t disappoint. In the end though, a movie like Wind River is one that hinges on the strength of its script, and with an ending that’s handed to the audience in unimpressive fashion and a disappointing catering towards simplistic conventionalism, it’s hard for me to walk away from it not feeling underwhelmed. On a second viewing there’s nothing to go over again, none of those “aha, it was there all along!” moments or details we overlooked. All in all it’s a very simple film, which I also understand people will latch onto. Again, the film is a mature one that doesn’t resort to cheap thrills to hold its weight. Unfortunately Sheridan mistakes this for not taking the necessary risks that prevent this from being the top-notch thriller that I should have been. Still, it’s a directorial debut that has a lot of merit to it, and I’m eager to see what Sheridan’s next venture is.



6/10