This Sheridan guy may be one of our best writer/directors yet

Rating: 8/10 (22 August 2017)

"Wind River" is the second film from writer/director Taylor Sheridan, who also gave us "Hell or High Water" last year, as well as wrote "Sicario". It's been called the "American Frontier Trilogy", cause let's face it everything sounds better in threes.
Elizabeth Olsen plays an FBI agent green to the ways of the snowy wilderness of the Wind River Indian Reservation and Jeremy Renner is an accomplished hunter for the Fish and Wildlife service. Together these two Avenger-cicles are put on to the case of a raped teenage girl found barefoot in the snow.
And the way the mystery unfolds is a slow-mover, in fact this movie feels much slower than "HOHW" even, so be prepared for that. But it is broken up by scenes of high intensity shoot-outs as well as a chance to just take in this land that becomes the main character.
We're seeing a place that is more than just blisteringly cold, It's coldness that can kill a person. It's an area that is desolate, that has been picked apart, and it's inhabitants people who are there because they have no other place to go and now must just survive.
I mentioned the place is being picked apart- we see a lot of the factors leading to an even greater decline and one of the most shocking is that this fairly big area has a police force which is about the size of half a starting football team.
The cast does nice work here too though, Renner chief among them. As a character who has experienced his own loss, this is his most affecting work since "The Hurt Locker". Olsen is a little more understated but still good while Jon Bernthal has a small but key scene here as well.
But I think the best performance comes from Gil Birmingham, who plays the dead girls father. You'll remember him from "HOHW" and the guy just keeps giving great performances and more people need to cast this man.
I love that Sheridan does know how to use him, which makes it hard for me to say but I feel it bares mentioning that I wish he did incorporate a Native American main character into the script other than having two white leads.
That said, I feel this may be the weakest of the "American Frontier Trilogy", but I still think Sheridan's heart and focus is in the right place and this is another occasionally suspenseful and no less eye-opening piece of work that actually does remind me of a 2 hour episode of the TV show "Longmire". That's a good thing.
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