Plausible for its Scorching Truth: Wind River

Rating: 10/10 (22 January 2020)

The crime-drama thriller Wind River has so many impressive aspects to the film other than its fine acting and director (Taylor Sheridan). Taylor Sheridan is also well known for his directory of Hell or High Water. I certainly feel as if this film is underlooked and underrated. It is truly engaging, and I never found myself looking for my next snack during it. Key themes in the film include unemployment, sexual abuse, and drugs abuse, within this Native American population. This film is extremely unpredictable and has an emotional set of events with a strong message being portrayed. A very well done film left me with my jaw dropping in the first five minutes and held the feeling until the credits displayed.
The film opens up with a Native American girl sprinting away from an incident (we later find out what) in the snowy Wyoming mountains on a Reservation. You can see her struggle, with a vast amount of fear in her eyes which add to the barbarous surroundings she's trudging through (barefoot). Soon, Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), a hunter, comes across the dead girl in the snow while hunting down some mountain lions that preyed on livestock. Lambert, however, is driven to find the cause of death of the girl he finds by his own daughter's rape and murder on the reservation. Throughout the movie they give several hints of him being a sniper, but is never actually confirmed which just leads to more heavy ending with what his character does. Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) steps in as a rookie FBI agent, to help solve the mystery murder of the Native American girl. While doing so, they have to overcome many series of realistic violent events, like being involved in multiple shootouts and having many dangerous encounters. Like with bear spray in a crackhouse. Enough said.
Something I'd say the film didn't do extremely well on was the sound. Often times it was extremely loud like the gunshots but other times I felt like was always messing with the volume. Sometimes, it sounded a bit muffled and unclear (specifically Renner) but it's not particularly his fault that he sounded that way it's the audio editors. Another thing I found a little cliche was the fact that the FBI agent was a woman. It seemed like the only reason for having a woman play the role of the FBI was to enhance the emotions of the audience, by her own emotions of the murder investigation.
The screenplay was so wonderfully put together, there was no excess dialogue or time wasted during it. There is much depth within the characters and storyline. The cast do an outstanding job and are so entertaining to watch. The scenes were so unique and clever.. For example, when Renner was in a snow ghillie suit and pops out of the snow filling his character as sniper in a shootout. However, it is not an easy film to watch. Often times, it is extremely dark and the message it is portraying is delivered in a harsh, realistic way. The setting of the film is absolutely phenomenal, and goes so well with the film considering the sun doesn't shine much, which I thought was actually quite depressing but fits purpose. The outfits and costumes were extremely adequate considering this film is taking place in the present.
The film ends with the following text on screen:
"While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women. No one knows how many are missing."
This is essentially the main theme, and they offered a great course of action showing the brutality the women go through, and how horrific some of the events they encounter truly are. Overall Wind River is a great movie, and is very engaging and dark. It contain lots of action that you won't want to miss. It is also a big eye opener to those unaware of the conditions of the women on reservations.