Renner & Olsen are formidable in 'Wind River'
'Wind River' tells the true story of an FBI agent who teams up with a town's veteran game tracker to investigate a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation.
A big thank you to the likes of actor, writer, and now director Taylor Sheridan for developing two successful scripts with female leads that don't place sex at the centre of the story. It is hard nowadays to find films and television shows that aren't stained with this trope in graphic detail. Even though the film is centred upon the rape of a young Native American woman, the film does not show the gruesomeness in its full extent.
'Wind River' takes the audience into rural America, far away from the cities that we've become used to seeing on the big screen. The people in rural Wyoming are tough and there's no messing about, and the film really shows the characters at the edge of darkness. The exhaustion of the city doesn't reach this area, but it doesn't mean these people are simple in any way; in fact, there's more richness and complexity than the fake attitude and deceitfulness that may come with the supposed "high life" that we're conditioned to aspire to, though it's nothing but an empty shell of what it presents itself to be. People in Wyoming work hard and have been through a lot, causing their bitter and resentful attitudes to stir.
It's a shame that this film isn't as widely recognised as Sheridan's previous work 'Hell Or High Water' starring Chris Pine, Jeff Bridges, and Ben Foster that was released at the end of 2016, or even 'Sicario' starring Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, and Josh Brolin from 2015. It's a film worth searching for at the cinemas as the tension Sheridan creates as a director makes him one of the best filmmakers of our time. There's something about his films that are just so profound and thrilling as he brings to life an array of diversity in his gripping stories.
'Wind River' is a complex and cleverly written thriller that starts out as a typical 'whodunnit', but becomes so much more than that. It's about retribution and the clash between the outsiders and locals; between the whites and natives, as a level of frustration arises from this murder investigation that brings up all these kinds of cultural suspicions.
In many ways, Elizabeth Olsen proves herself to be a formidable actress and the better actress within her family. She plays a character out of her element, but this could also be a very good vantage point for us to see through. She's supported by Jeremy Renner - a man of few words, but his actions definitely mean more than the little words he speaks. Their dynamic is not something like that of an odd-duo; it's more the both of them trying to prove themselves in their environments.
It's been a long time since we had a thriller that was as good as this.
'Wind River' is in cinemas now.
