DVD/Blu-ray Mini-Review - Wind River (15)

This isn't the land of waiting for back-up. This is the land of you're on your own.

The Gist: The story begins with the tragic death of a young Native American woman on Wind River, a snowbound Wyoming reservation. Jeremy Renner is Cory Lambert, the hunter-tracker who discovers her body. Then when rookie FBI agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) is sent to investigate, she enlists his skills to help her track down whoever is responsible. Relations are initially tense between local law enforcement and the novice agent, but that changes when both Lambert and Banner turn out to have an emotional stake in discovering the truth.

The Juice: Writer-director Taylor Sheridan has made his name through taut, spare screenplays for movies such as Sicario and Hell or High Water. He creates a similarly tough and focused thriller here, adding in only whatever backstory is directly applicable to the central investigation. As with Hell, the action plays out on a starkly beautiful and unforgiving landscape, accompanied by an elegiac score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis. Renner and Olsen are an established team from their Marvel Avengers outings and connect instantly. He's stoically bearing the weight of his own tragedy, while she's a resourceful and empathetic young woman, scrabbling for her bearings in a thankless new environment. Graham Greene (Dances With Wolves) is scene-stealing as the police chief giving Olsen her rudimentary orientation, while Menominee Indian actor Apesanahkwat gives an emotionally unsparing performance as the dead girl's devastated father.

The Judgement: 7.5/10. Emotions are raw and so is one traumatic flashback scene, in this streamlined thriller. And your heart will hammer during more than one sequence, as the investigation sparks sudden violence. Like Sheridan's other recent work, however, Wind River shows real depth of social subtext. Interesting that a movie with sparse dialogue can still manage to say so much.