Taylor Sheridan continues to prove that he is one of the best working film makers right now with his directorial debut Wind River. Full review below the cut.
When Taylor Sheridan's debut Sicario came out in 2015, it was an almost baffling experience. My reaction, and think everyone's, really, boiled down to "You're telling me that the deputy dude from Son's of Anarchy wrote this? Seriously?" 2016's Hell or High Water, while not as grand as Sicario, showed that the debut wasn't a fluke and established Sheridan's love of telling stories of people on the fringes of the world, the broken and abandoned with no where to go. And now, Wind River, the first film he wrote and directed, proves that Sheridan is easily one of the best emerging film makers of the decade.
The story revolves around the murder of Natalie Hanson, an 18-year-old resident of the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), a Fish and Wildlife hunter responsible for clearing out mountain lions and wolves on the rez, discovers the body and is enlisted by the Indian tribal police to help FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) investigate the murder and navigate the world as it is on the rez.
That's really all of the plot I'll give, because the real joy of the film isn't so much the twists and turns of the investigation itself (thankfully, Sheridan keeps this relatively straight forward with no pointless red herrings) but how the characters each come into their own as the investigation progresses and how wonderfully Sheridan avoids the pitfalls of cliche. One gets the sense that this was done on purpose because both leads are cut from the same cloth of pretty much every James Patterson trashy mystery novel ever written: Lambert is the loner dealing with a personal tragedy that directly links to the case and Banner is the woefully incompetent and unprepared Fed who has no idea how to survive in the "real" country. Lambert also check-marks the "Is white but really belongs to the Noble Savage Indians" guide to show Banner around the wondrous world of the Indian Reservation.
Except, none of that happens, at all. Banner does have some missteps but actively works to correct them and always seeks out and listens to the advice of Lambert and the tribal police chief Ben (Graham Greene). She readily admits she is in over her head, that the only thing she has to offer is the authority to act and she needs all the help she can get. Lambert, likewise, doesn't spend any real time wallowing in his grief or calling attention to it at every opportunity. Also significant is that the story never makes solving the murder about resolving Lambert's own grief, it is, from the start, solely about gaining justice for Natalie and her remaining family.
Most importantly, though, is the the portrayal of the Native Americans and their life on the reservation. A big part of the cinematography in the film is the immense landscapes of Wyoming, the mountains, the dense forests, and the wide open lands covered in snow that connects them. While beautiful, the film turns the land into the wide open jaws slowly devouring the lives of the people living on it. The film does an amazing job of showing life on the rez not as the government giving the remaining Indians a place to call their own, rather, it contends that the reservations where the garbage bins Indians where thrown into to let desolation, time and hopelessness finish what disease and bullets started. That legacy of being treated as useless things dumped on useless land is the unspoken tapestry of the film and a subject that in lesser hands, would've become the full text of the film, ruining it's effectiveness.
If there's a flaw with Wind River, it's that Sheridan can't quite keep the tension as taut as he would like consistently throughout the film. The pacing he's going for is one of stillness and silence that is constantly on the verge of being broken by the violence of man or nature. There are times when the stillness of things just turns to flatness and scenes turn into a waiting game to get us to somewhere interesting again. Sheridan is able to pull the string tight again whenever he loses the tension he's going for, which helps, but it also makes the moments of dullness impossible to not notice since you realize you weren't paying all that much attention a few moments ago when the film gets engaging again.
Since it doesn't undermine the film as a whole, it's not a fatal or ruining flaw, it's just the dirty speck on an otherwise amazing work. SO even though it lags a bit at times, Wind River is easily one of the best movies I've seen this year and well worth checking out.
Grade: A-
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