If Wind River doesn't cool down your summer, you're probably already dead. Taylor Sheridan's newest desert crime-thriller is as bleak and violent as his others (Sicario, Hell or High Water) but takes place in a frozen Wyoming winter. When a young woman's body is discovered half-naked in the snow of the Wind River Indian Reservation, a lone FBI agent teams up with local law enforcement to investigate, despite the hostile bitterness of nearby residents. Clue leads to clue, leads beget leads, and eventually they find themselves in a mire of mystery. The killer, though, isn't alone, and in a frigid wasteland, it takes hardened predators to hunt murderers.
Taylor Sheridan, finally in control of his own script, displays his keen sense of timing and pace here, keeping things slow and entrancing while he drives you to the edge of your seat. He knows the power of silence, and half the scenes feature no dialogue at all, relying on striking images and the immersive eyes of our leads to carry the film. Speaking of which, Elizabeth Olsen plays our FBI investigator, a woman of small stature and questionable judgment when she arrives at Wind River. Showing up in the thick of a snowstorm, laughably unprepared for the environment, she resorts to asking a resident for proper attire and recruiting the Fish & Wildlife agent to help her solve the case. That agent is played by Jeremy Renner, and he is a nearly perfect foil to her. Knowledgeable, pragmatic, and sensitive, he found the corpse in the snowy field while hunting a mountain lion that had been preying on livestock.
The two ill-matched trackers, however, develop a working relationship quickly and sift through possible suspects with aplomb. They know they're on the right track when one of their first suspects reacts with sudden violence. Slowly, the two impress each other with their skills and ability to adapt, and in one memorable scene, Renner's character emotionally bares himself to Olsen's, and it'll tug at your tear ducts something awful.
But the violence is nowhere near over, and if you know Taylor Sheridan, you know there's a doozy of a climax still to come. Arrive it does, but not in traditional fashion. I've never seen a flashback be a climax (unless you count the revelation of Snape's unrequited love in the last Harry Potter, but that's another conversation), but Sheridan pops this one in kind of in the middle of nowhere. If you're keeping your eye on the clock, you know it's about time for things to wrap up, but otherwise you think this new search of a suspect's property is going to result in a final clue. Then -- blooie! -- here we are in a flashback to what really happened the night of the murder. It's lovely and sad and dark and horrifying, plus Jon Bernthal shows up and makes you feel things. Then, not even five seconds after we revert to the present -- blooie! -- some of the most gasp-inducing violence on screen this year explodes into your eyeballs.
Even then, it's still not over, because Sheridan has invested us so deeply into these characters that we need significant closure. That we get, thankfully, in a series of denouement scenes that mostly serve to wring out whatever tears you haven't shed. It's not a letdown at all, and Sheridan reinforces his themes of trust and care and sacrifice while underscoring the central characterizations of the film: that of predators and prey, and just how far one is willing to go to survive.
It may not be official Oscar season yet, but we've already seen too many possible big contenders. Keep your eye on this one for a nomination for original screenplay, and maybe cinematography or direction.
IMDb: Wind River
