“Wind River” opens with an intense moment: a young girl running barefoot in the bleak Wyoming snow. During the course of this engaging movie, we find out who she is, where she is, and why she is running. This is a great crime drama, along the lines of “Hell or High Water”. Taylor Sheridan wrote both movies and has tried his hand at directing this one. What a great job at that! This is a character driven drama with gut wrenching performances by Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Gil Birmingham, Graham Greene and Jon Bernthal. Something horrific has happened on the Wind River Reservation and rookie FBI agent Olsen teams with game tracker Renner who is haunted by a past tragedy. There are no annoying subplots or even periods or comic relief, just a well-told story. If you liked “Hell or High Water” you are going to enjoy this one too. Don’t look for a sweet happy ending, as this movie will show us, on the reservation there are no happy endings, only a kind of redemption. This is a little Indie movie though, so if you want to see it on a big screen (and you really should) HURRY!
Hell or High Water
For those of you who have been following this blog, you have probably noticed that I love to follow the smaller movies. “Hell or High Water” is one of the best of these movies I have seen this year. The great Jeff Bridges plays a crafty Texas Ranger close to retirement in this modern western. I enjoyed the back and forth banter he has with his partner, played by Gil Birmingham. Chris Pine has some acting chops as one of two brothers (the other is played by Ben Foster) who resort to robbing banks for what they believe to be a noble reason. These is some unexpected humor, great dialogue and superb acting. This is a gritty movie, that should be depressing, but there is satisfying redemption at the end.