Wind River * * *

Taylor Sheridan is a fine actor who is establishing himself as an impressive ScreenWriter. Sicario had its weaknesses though it certainly got his name out there as a writer. Then he wrote Hell or High Water, which would have been one of the best films of 2016. With this, his third major screenplay he has also chosen to direct it himself.

       Unfortunately I’d call Wind River a step backwards and closer to Sicario than the excellence of Hell or HIgh Water.  Another similarity it has with Sicario is miscasting. Elizabeth Olsen is as an FBI officer sent on a mission to some far flung dangerous area. She looks completely unconvincing.  Sure a woman can play such a  role, no problem, just look at Frances Mcdormand in Fargo: someone like that would have helped give credibility to the story.  Or even more persuasively, given the story, a woman of Native American background would have been good.  Don’t get me wrong, Olsen is a pretty good actress, but that doesn’t make her right for this role, despite her best efforts.

A fun day in the snowfields. 

       Set in the snowy mountains of Wyoming, where it can get  mighty cold, Jeremy Renner stars as a Wildlife Officer (Cory) who stumbles across the body of a young native girl. She has been beaten and violated and left to die in the cold.

       Enter the FBI officer Jane Banner (Olsen).  She seeks help from Cory.  She is inexperienced and hopelessly ill equipped to deal with the area.  She also has to work closely with the local law enforcement officer, a wizened straight-up old Cop/Tribal Chief.  

        As the story progresses we learn that Cory feels a  personal connection to this crime as he lost own daughter a few years earlier.  We also learnt  what actually happened to the young native girl and the flashbacks to the night of her death are disturbing. Be prepared for some quite violent scenes in this film.  It gets a bit Peckinpah at one stage.

      The actors do well, but overall I feel Sheridan has over complicated his own script. The slide put in at the end telling us about the statistics of Native American Women who have been reported missing and no one has looked for them - as though they don’t matter - is a disturbing piece of knowledge but it comes across as an “afterthought” which made me think, maybe Sheridan himself can’t decide what his film is about.  Or he want’s it to say more than what it actually does.