WIND RIVER – Review

Gil Birmingham and Jeremy Renner in Wind River

Review by Stephen Tronicek

Taylor Sheridan’s WIND RIVER feels wrong. It feels like something is rotting at the center of the film. Like something is trying to desperately escape, but can’t. That’s a good thing because that’s the case with each of the film’s characters. Each of them is held on the Wind River Indian Reservation, whether it be by choice or necessity. The problem is that the land kills whatever beauty appears there in the cold, and soon that comes bubbling up to the surface as Jeremy Renner’s Cory Lambert finds the dead body of a young girl leading to a domino effect of violence for all those involved, including FBI officer Jane Banner (portrayed by Elizabeth Olsen).

The tone at the start of WIND RIVER is somewhat daunting. Sheridan’s otherwise effortless scriptwriting for the films Sicario and Hell or High Water, while being high watermarks of the past few years, didn’t suggest the amount of depth that can be found in WIND RIVER. You can see why Sheridan wanted to direct this project himself, seeing how the direction needed to be willing to divorce itself from the calculated eyes of past directors Denis Villeneuve and David Mackenzie.

That’s because WIND RIVER needed to feel frustrating, flawed, and terrifying. It survives on feeling imperfect because that is its main stroke of genius. Sheridan places a very formalist, heroic script within a setting that is decidedly realistic and unmercifully gritty. At first, it feels like Sheridan has botched the entire thing until you realize that he must be strangling any sense of heroism beneath the horrifying trappings of the setting. Cory and Jane speak like their words are going to be etched in stone, but the movie around them is trying with all its might to snuff out any sense of heroism, which becomes the greatest draw the movie has. Much like the characters, desperately having to deal with their surroundings and always trying to escape, the formalist elements of the screenplay are always trying to escape the vicious environment that surrounds them. The film never feels right, the dialogue never feels right, elements that would derail any other film, but here they only compliment the character interactions. This has to be deliberate too because the direction tends to scatter itself between realism and formalism, at once grounding us in the quiet reality that the characters exist in but also the excruciating emotions that they have to encounter. The loud, grating drone of snowmobiles, the alien emptiness of the landscape, the blurted out one liners that you wish would land but pass too quickly, all of it is representative of the excruciating emotions of being trapped in a place where it’s always cold and there’s nobody for miles. They’re also indicative of the excruciating relationship between an artistic piece of more entertaining sustenance breaking out from the center of what is described as gritty realism and that dynamic is what makes Wind River all the more excellent.

The artistic talents surrounding the film also reinforce this. Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’s score is restrained but deeply haunting. It feels like a voice in the back of your head slowly making you go insane. The acting talents of Renner and Olsen also perfectly match the heroic ideal being smashed here because they themselves are both representatives of heroes seen on our big screens (as Hawkeye and Scarlet Witch respectively). They’re also just really good in the film, with Renner doing what he did best in The Bourne Legacy (hang out in the snow) and Olsen representing a totally out of her depth, but very capable agent adds a real soul to such a perverse film. There’s a surprise cameo in the film that comes during one of the film’s best scenes as well who lends his rugged physicality to what is the only beautiful thing about the movie. For five minutes it’s a bravado performance.

WIND RIVER might sour to those who don’t see what it’s trying to do, and others might just enjoy the sickening taste of all of it at face value (though I’d be concerned for anybody who did). It is a film that creeps into your mind almost without your permission and puts an acidic taste in your mouth. That’s intentional though, and the effect makes for an intensity almost unparalleled in any other film experience this year. Take a trip to Wind River, if you can take it.

4 1/2  of 5 Stars

Wind River