Wind River

2017 drama

Rating: 14/20

Plot: Animal bounty hunter Cory Lambert is called on to help solve the mystery of his deceased daughter's murdered friend. He and an FBI agent who might be out of her element ride around on a snowmobile on a Native American reservation and get ready to shoot people.

This from Taylor Sheridan who wrote Hell or High Water and Sicario, but I didn't think it was as good as either of those. You really have to enjoy snow and violence, I guess. The snow is an interesting clean and bright contrast to the darkness at the heart of the movie. The mystery unfurls in some surprising ways until you get to the end of the movie and realize that it's kind of like most contemporary mysteries, like a completed Lego piece made up of borrowed Legos from other sets. I had trouble emotionally connecting to anything because few of the characters--and certainly not any of them who had any chance of dying--were developed very well. The action turns violent and as bleakly silly as you'd expect from a Hollywood production before a message about missing Native American women on reservations is tacked on to try to give the whole thing some substance. Sorry, Mr. Sheridan, but it really seemed like it was all violence for the sake of violence. This was an entertainment, not a public service announcement.

I'm not the biggest fan of Jeremy Renner, and here, he's playing the exact sort of tough guy you'd expect in something like this. He doesn't do it poorly, but I didn't find the character that engaging. He was just a guy haunted by his past who was really good at what he did, but there are tons of characters out there like that. Elizabeth Olsen plays the FBI agent, a character who we're made to think is a strong female character but who ends up being nothing more than a love interest for Renner to save. I did like the character played by Apesanahkwat.

Nick Cave sort of moans over the proceedings, and the story is gripping enough to keep the average person interested until the end, but there just wasn't anything fresh or anything deep about this one.