Snow job.

Rating: 4/10 (6 September 2017)

Jeremy Renner delivers a fine performance and the state of Wyoming looks magnificent in this hackneyed disappointment of a murder mystery that sulks from beginning to end. Sloppy and improbable it stumbles more than once as it injects statement, upending a rhythm that is near moribund to begin with a cast of characters snowbound in blues.
Corey Lambert (Renner) is Wyoming game warden trying to balance the predator population in Wyoming when he comes across the body of 18 year Natalie Hanson, dead from hypothermia but while running from something in the process. With the death occurring on tribal land FBI agent Jane Banner (Liz Olsen) is assigned to sought things out but makes a less than impressive debut that she more than makes up for with some deadly shooting, take charge tough talk as well as withstand half a can of mace sprayed in her face without mussing hair or make-up. Eventually they get around to dropping by the prime suspects place. At this point the already sputtering story stalls momentarily to play with time and tenderness and in doing so obliterate the meager tension remaining before resuming the earlier aborted climax killing carnage that auteur Taylor Sheridan interrupts to jam a strong woman statement in. It rings hollow (much of the blame belonging to the limited and miscast Olsen) and drains the outcome of impact to go along with a busy Lambert in the film's final minutes sun setting with three different characters.
As the credits role Sheridan makes another pitch for the plight of women on reservations but it does not assuage the fact Wind River is a clumsy, gratuitously violent piece of sadism made even more distasteful by a concern that is meant to purchase license for his slipshod mayhem and murky funk.