Directed by Taylor Sheridan
Written by Taylor Sheridan
Starring Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olson, Graham Green, Gil Birmingham, Q'Orianka Kilcher
Release Date September 8th, 2017
Published September 8th, 2017
Wind River is one of the most emotional experiences I have had at the movies in 2017. The modern western from writer-director Taylor Sheridan is a cold and harsh drama about a cold and harsh place where these characters don’t merely live, they survive. The film also shines a devastating light on the plight of Native Americans and the criminal lack of care we give to their living conditions and well-being. That it takes a white writer-director and two white movie stars to get this story told says nearly as much as the movie itself.
Wind River begins terrifyingly with a young Native American woman running through a barren, snow covered valley. You can feel the cold simply from her manner and the way Sheridan films her running at a distance. Upon closer look your fear for her amps up as it is revealed that she is not wearing shoes or gloves. She collapses and tries to get up and keep going, she’s bleeding. The scene fades to black with her running toward a forest on a mountainside.
The body of the young girl, Natalie, is found a day later by Corey (Jeremy Renner), a hunter employed by the US Fish and Wildlife Administration as he is tracking mountain lions that have been attacking livestock. Corey knows the young girl and her family, they live on the reservation where he met his now ex-wife (Q’Orianka Kilcher). The dead girl was a friend of Corey’s late daughter.
Since the death happened on an Indian Reservation, the jurisdiction is murky, somewhere between County Sheriff’s, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the FBI. The FBI is represented by Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olson), an inexperienced agent from Las Vegas who is ill-prepared for the frozen conditions of Utah; she is somehow the closest available agent for the job despite being stationed nearly 400 miles away.
