Wind River - Movie Review

A little fact about myself: I'm very hesitant on films based on true stories. More and more I'm seeing films that are based on true events being made on more recent events. In 2019 we had a film called Bombshells, a movie based on real events about several women at FOX News in 2016 who set out to expose their boss for sexual harassment. Do we need a film so soon about events that happened just a couple of years ago? I also find that these films and aren't original or, more importantly,... important. Like they just often just tell what happened to convey information and I want to see films that don't have to tell me they're based on true events in order to enjoy or take meaning from them. Recently I found such a film, one that has a themes and problems that we should notice and take away from while feeling very realistic: Wind River.

Wind River is the story of a Native American girl (Kelsey Chow) in Wyoming who is found dead on the Wind River Indian Reservation. She is discovered dead by an expert tracker and game hunter, Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) and it's discovered that before she died this girl was also raped. This brings an FBI agent, Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen), into the case and she gets Cory to stick around and use his skills as a tracker and a hunter to find who raped this girl and where she was running from because she is found 5 miles away from the closest place of civilization. As the two work together they learn that whatever happened to this girl isn't as simple as it sounds...

I've always had a fascination with Native American culture since I was little. I grew up in a state where they had a strong presence before European began to live on the land and where I live now their presence is more apparent. It makes me wonder how they lived in such crazy conditions like on the Great Plains, where the weather can be intensely hot or deathly cold, sometimes switching in a matter of hours. But after seeing Wind River I realized that they still have many problems today because America has beaten them down harshly. Our government has "tried" to help them, but they also have been allowing big corporations to demolish their lands and threaten their livelihoods, as well as limit what their rights are and ability to take care of themselves. It's awful to think about, but there's more to it than that, as shown in this film.

Throughout the film the Native Americans that live in or around Wind River are clearly seen in not the best living conditions. They're not homeless or in rags, but they have barely of the services that are near cities or towns. If you had a choice to live here or another town you'd most likely would pick the other town, it's just not an appealing place to live. The Tribal Police Chief, Ben Shoyo (Graham Greene) has only six other police officers in his department to cover an area the size of Rhode Island. That's insane! This sets up how hopeless and difficult it feels to our protagonists, like they're the only ones who care about finding out the truth about this dead girl. Plus with there being so much snow about it makes traveling very hazardous unless you have snowmobiles on hand.

The film's cinematography is very good. This was shot on location in the Wind River Indian Reservation and it looks so beautiful! There was much snow and cold, all caught in great, wide shots. I felt drawn into the world, especially when outdoors (where a lot of the film takes place). Barely any CGI, only scene I could tell had some sort of CGI was a moment with some animals in a cave. That's it though, everything else looks stunning and real and I loved it! The shots also convey a sense of hopelessness with its lack of colors, mostly grey, white, and a bit of green to show that we're out in the wilderness, away from densely populated areas of the United States and away from services that could speed up the investigation.

Jeremy Renner most people know as playing Hawkeye from the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where he's charismatic, funny, and serious. In Wind River he's putting on undoubtedly his best performance he's ever done for film. His character has a connection to the Native American community that really works for this film because he isn't just some white guy who comes in to solve a mystery, he feels that this is something personal to him and it's riveting to see how serious he starts to take this case. Solving this mystery is different from a normal crime case since, as stated, there's a ton of area with a small amount of people living it, so Cory treats it like it's a hunt in that he uses his tracking of knowledge of animals to find clues.

Elizabeth Olson is also very great in the film. She's the fish-out-of-water character, very out of place in this community. When we first meet her people comment that she's very poorly dressed for this cold place. In fact if hadn't been given proper clothes she would have frozen to death. But she's not a useless character though, she proves her skills finding clues and using her rank to get into places that would take longer to get into by the people of Wind River. She adjusts to her new environment, adapts, develops bonds with other characters, and really starts to care (more than when she first arrived) for this dead girl and the people of Wind River. And her chemistry with Jeremy Renner is great, which makes sense since they already worked very well together in the MCU.

I've also got to give big props to some of the Native American actors in this film because their performances were so natural. Julia Jones, Martin Sensmeier, and Graham Greene stand out with their strong performances that felt so life-like. My favorite of the Native American actors in this film is Gil Birmingham, who plays the father of the missing girl. The scenes where he interacts with Jeremy Renner are full to the brim with emotion! You can absolutely tell how devastated he and his wife are to find out their daughter is dead. Tears were welling in my eyes to see how defeated he was to know that his daughter was never coming home. It's award worthy how great Birmingham's acting is in this film!

The story was also well crafted, flowing smoothly with some twists and turns I wasn't expecting. Multiple times when I thought the movie was going one way it would go another way that surprised me and renewed my interest in the film. I really cared about this dead girl and how difficult it was to try and find her because there's law and lack of resources that kept our protagonists from finding out what happened to her sooner. The director of this movie, Taylor Sheridan, really captured what it felt like to be live on these reservations, bringing up the lives of these people and interweaving them into the story pretty well. The ending was also one of the most satisfying movie endings I've seen in a long time. The last scene did hit me in the feels hard, but there was so much catharsis after what happens in the climax that I just felt so pleased, even if I was hit hard by the final moments of the film.

One thing I was not expecting from Wind River, but am very pleased with, is the action. It's not like normal action like in an action movie, it's like... people are really dying. That's because the way scenes can transition from drama or a tense moment to pure violence is gut-punching and multiple times throughout my viewing I was jumping in my chair and crying out, horrified by what was happening on the screen. It's brutal, realistic, terrifying, and intense to see. These scenes are also well shot and edited! People get hurt, get killed, and just get the shit beat out of them. There's around a 30 second scene involving this dead girl that made me want to look away from the screen, brutal as hell and I'm trembling in horror at what I'm watching...

My only problem with the film is that some of small subplots don't have major impact on the main story. You could say they add a little more to the characters, which they do, but they don't circle back to the main story or characters very well. Cory is going through a divorce with his Native American wife, he's also concern about his kid and how the divorce will affect him, and Jane Banner is having a few issues of her own. They do seem important to the main story, but they could have be integrated a little better into it instead of going 3/4s of the way with them. It was a good attempt to flesh out our characters more, but I still think it could have been done just a bit better.

So let's go back to the start of this article, about me talking about how films can also be important and should be if they're based on real events or periods of time. You see, as of now, there is are lists of missing and murdered people for every demographic group in the United States and Canada expect for one: Native American women. This is a human rights crisis and has been going on for decades! It's still a huge problem right now and this shouldn't be happening! Taylor Sheridan has stated that one of the reasons he made this film was to help spread the word more on this issue. This isn't based on a singular event, this has been going on for years and we need to help end it!

Wind River is not just an entertaining film, it's an important film. It's not based on something that's happened, but something that has happened multiple times and could be happening right now. This depiction of a very real issue in the world is the type of "True Story" that I want to see, something that has meaning to and something people should be looking into more. That, along with the strong performances, excellent camerawork, and horrifying depictions of violence, make Wind River a very strong recommendation from me. Go see it guys, it's absolutely worth watching!

Tentative Score: 9.25/10

Definitive Score: 9.25/10

I had this film on my list of films to watch for a while and a friend of mine picked it out, not knowing what they we were going to get into. So glad they picked this film.