Not as clever as it thinks it is.

Rating: 6/10 (3 May 2018)

Taylor Sheridan writes and directs a visually appealing, but fairly mundane story that doesn't transcend the basic premise of the plot. Sheridan uses his experiences of working with director Denis Villeneuve (Sicario) to good effect, albeit it without quite matching the latter's work, and the acting is solid across the board, but the subtleties and conflicting motivations bubbling beneath the surface, present in Sheridan's earlier work, are largely missing. Some more details, and spoilers, below.
The film ends with a sombre note that no missing person records are kept for people living on Indian reservations. After spending what little time we had with the public officials of said areas being focussed on disputes about authority and their rights to be, or not be, somewhere - this kind of absolutist statements feels like it's missing a lot of context. Who isn't keeping records, the FBI? The local police? Can't they? Won't they? There's a lot missing here, and this goes back to the rest of the film: it's not as profound and clever as it - seemingly - thinks it is.
At the moment main character Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) finds the body of Natalie (Kelsey Asbille) that sets off the chain of events that is the film's plot, he is seen in his job as a hunter. He is portrayed as such, says he is, and again emphasises he is later - and his quips are all about hunting, too. It is also quickly revealed that his own daughter was lost in the wilds and found killed, and that he still suffers from this - almost to the exclusion of other motivations. Are we as an audience supposed to have any doubt as to what this man's motivations are going into this story?
Renner does a fine job portraying Lambert as he is written, that's not the issue. But I'm struggling to find out what Sheridan wanted his audiences to feel. Are we supposed to cheer on his subsequent killing(s)? Are we supposed to feel as though Lambert is crossing some sort of line? And what line would that be, when the other characters in the story - from Natalie's father to FBI agent Banner - are all cheering him on to do what he ultimately ends up doing; making what is by then the only surviving man who assaulted Natalie suffer the same fate she did.
Speaking of which, when the police goes to confront the security workers at a drill site any remaining subtleties go flying out the window when the security engages in a wild shoot-out with police and FBI. Eh... why? What did they think was going to happen, that nobody was going to check on the place where they had just lost half a dozen law enforcement colleagues - and that they were going to get away with their crimes? Not likely! Sheridan then doubles down by introducing a lengthy flashback scene of the moment when Natalie and her boyfriend were attacked by said workers. The point of this is unclear. There is no need to know Natalie wanted to move to California with her boyfriend to appreciate that the assault was horrific, and her death a tragedy.
Furthermore, it further reduces the villains to caricatures. Fitting, for it allows Lambert to see them as stand-ins for the men- never outright stated, but hinted at - who were probably responsible for his own daughter's death, too. Contrast this to Sang-il Lee's Akunin ('Villain'), where the young man who kills a young woman ends up becoming the main character of the story. I get that Sheridan wasn't going for that, but he went way over to the other side, robbing us viewers of any ambiguity about what was the right thing for the protagonists to do. Moreover, it makes the confrontation with the villains one of self-defence, except for that last guy, and not a case of - perhaps questionable - revenge.
Quick note on the other actors: Julia Jones is fine as Lambert's ex-wife Wilma, Kelsey Asbille did a good job as Natalie with the little screen time she had in what can't have been easy scenes to film, Graham Greene makes for a very believable local police officer, Gil Birmingham and his character Martin go a long way towards making the setting in the Indian reservation meaningful (why wasn't the Lambert character part of the local police?!), and ... oh, Elizabeth Olsen as FBI agent Jane Banner!
I like Olsen, she makes the 'big city FBI agent' work, but I am just unclear as to what her purpose in this story is. She is of no help in the investigations, she can't actually be there because of jurisdiction issues - until she somehow can, she is attacked twice, rescued twice, and she in no way limits Lambert's all-too-obvious quest but instead encourages him to go his own way. Sheridan perhaps didn't want to retrace the steps he took in Sicario, where he also presented a female FBI agent as a moral compass of sorts (Emily Blunt) - but I'm sure he could have done better here.
Ultimately then, a decent film - but it takes more to make it great than adding landscape shots of Wyoming and a few run-down trailers of people named Littlefeather.