Wind River (2017)

Film: Wind River (2017)
Stars: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Gil Birmingham, Graham Greene
Director: Taylor Sheridan
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

I have to admit, the idea of sitting through two hours of Jeremy Renner or Elizabeth Olsen at this point kind of sounded exhausting going into Wind River.  When they had their breakout roles (in The Hurt Locker and Martha Marcy Mae Marlene), they announced themselves as serious filmic talents (I would have nominated both for Academy Awards), but since then the movies they've played in, and even their talents within said films, have come into question.  That both are two of the least interesting members of the Avengers, in particular, seems a fascinating conundrum for actors that have one better performance on their resume than the likes of Chris Evans or Chris Hemsworth have even come close toward despite the latter two being much better in the Marvel series.  Seeing them together, in a film from a director I've quite liked recently (Hell or High Water winning a 4-star rating on TMROJ), I was curious if Sheridan could find something special within them that was clearly on-display in their breakout hits.

(Spoilers Ahead) Wind River centers around a murder, or at least that's what is heavily implied when Cory (Renner), a hunter with the DNR finds the body of a young woman in the snow.  As the film moves on, we learn the critical role this girl played in Cory's life, and the death of his daughter (she was her best friend and the girl that called him to tell her that his daughter was missing), and we get a case of the well-trod but still fertile territory of parent-dealing-with-the-loss-of-their-child.  The investigation into the murder leads us into a poverty-stricken, crime-riddled reservation that is not friendly to even Graham Greene's local Police Chief, much less the young woman Jane (Olsen) who is here from the FBI, and rather green-behind-the-gills.  The film unfolds quickly and rapidly, with a pretty quality final showdown between the killers and the cops (that results in more death than you'd expect), albeit the concluding moments of the film stretch way too long when you wish they'd have ended the picture with Renner's snowy mountaintop murder.

The film's central heart is Renner's Cory, and that works from a cinematic level even if you have to feel that the politically correct angle is dangling pretty close to "line crossed."  The film invests ferociously in the idea of the "white male savior" as there's no reason that Renner's character needs to be white-this isn't based on a specific true story from what I can tell, just an amalgamation, so he's not playing a real person.  It becomes particularly condescending when Greene and Olsen's characters frequently make mistakes and defer to his knowledge, despite them being the actual law enforcement characters who are trained for this work.  Olsen's role in particular was sometimes hard to watch from the way her character was treated by the writers; the scene where she's unprepared for the cold of the winter feels a little hackneyed and "let's trade in big city cliche" for my taste; spoken as someone who used to live in the desolated cold north countryside, I can speak from experience that most people are at least somewhat prepared for such events, and also that her car windows wouldn't be that iced-over if she'd been driving for longer than twenty minutes (nitpicking, but still).

Olsen's role is so vastly underwritten, I don't know if she could have saved it, but she doesn't as it feels like a stock character-a lesser facsimile of Clarice Sterling, constantly being guided by a man in her attempts to right the wrongs on-display in the film.  Renner is far, far better, finding an introverted quiet in his demeanor, never overplaying his hand even when the writers give him ridiculous things to say in the back twenty minutes of the movie.  In my opinion, this might be his best performance since The Hurt Locker-I don't know that comes across as a compliment, but I mean it as such and it proves that the big-paychecks he's been cashing in mindless franchise installments haven't squelched his gift completely.  Combined with a weird assuredness that Sheridan brings to the showdown toward the film's end (a breathless, hard-to-watch, but nonetheless effective piece of cinema), this is a movie I'd recommend, though it's not as poetic as his Best Picture nominee from last year.

Those are my thoughts on Wind River, one of those rare independent films that actually gained theaters throughout the summer, and despite a pathetic August box office, will probably emerge as one of the few hits to come out of the month (perhaps the biggest loser, in fact, of August may be the studios themselves for being so slow to come out with major content as the summer waned).  If you've seen it-share yours.  And if not, please weigh in on where you see Renner and Olsen's careers going-do you feel like they can ever outdo their breakout roles, or are they doomed to stay in their long shadows?