Powerful story that avoids the trap of cliché

Rating: 9/10 (25 August 2017)

I know a lot of people who would not like this remarkable movie, written and directed by Taylor Sheridan. If you don't like violence, you might as well stop reading now. If you oppose hunting, you can stop. If thoughts of a child being lost are too troubling, stop. But if you want to see a powerful tale about achieving retribution despite the forces aligned against that possibility, you may appreciate Wind River. So many easy mistakes this movie could have made, but didn't. There was no unconvincing romance, despite the respect and understated chemistry between the main characters. There were no long quasi-editorials about the plight of reservation Indians. The filmmakers show you that. There was no pretending that people simply get over soul-wounds by the next scene. These characters carry their pain with them and it helps shape who they are and what they will do. What the filmmakers do give you is beautiful, treacherous mountain scenery (the Wind River Indian Reservation is in Wyoming, though the film was shot in Utah), where blizzards are blinding and it's so cold that breathing can burst a person's lungs. They give you snowmobiles racing across the fields, forests whose sounds could be branches breaking or a family of stalking cougars. Best of all, they give you several profound cinematic moments, achieved not when the characters say a lot, but when they say almost nothing. "At times, Sheridan has his characters spell out a little too clearly what they're thinking and feeling . . . but the words are so beautiful and come from such a place of deep truth, it's hard not to be moved," says Christy Lemire in her review for RogerEbert.com. I don't want to say too much about the actual story, so as not to take away from your experiencing it fresh. Suffice it to say it's about the investigation of a murder; it's about gun culture and drug culture and their inevitable consequences; and it's about survival. And it's about loving and safeguarding your children. Once you have them, a father says, "You can't blink. Not once. Not ever." Put everything else aside and concentrate on the fine acting. Jeremy Renner plays the protagonist, fish & wildlife employee Cory Lambert ("I hunt predators") who has many reasons for trying to solve this killing; Elizabeth Olsen is the FBI agent who learns more in a week in the snow than in her FBI Academy training, that's for sure; Graham Greene is the laconic, seen-it-all tribal police chief; and Gil Birmingham is the father of the murdered girl.