Rookie FBI agent Elizabeth Olsen teams with her Avengers co-star Jeremy Renner to investigate a mysterious death on an Indian reservation in this atmospheric western thriller directed by gun screenwriter Taylor Sheridan.
Delivers shrewd insights into troubling American social issues in a punchy, action-and-violence-filled package.
Screened as part of NZIFF 2017
Wind River 2017
Following up his energetic scripting for Sicario and Hell or High Water, actor-turned-screenwriter Taylor Sheridan takes the director’s chair for this chilly backwoods thriller set in the remote Wind River Indian reservation, Wyoming. Jeremy Renner stars as Cory Lambert, an expert marksman employed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service to cull dangerous animals. While out on a job he discovers the body of a young Native American woman in the middle of the wilderness. The FBI hold jurisdiction and they send rookie agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) to investigate. She soon realises she’s in over her head, so looks to Lambert to help her hunt down a predator of a different kind. — MM
“Wind River is a modern western, and one of very few forays into the genre that’s set in snow country... Sheridan and cinematographer Ben Richardson use that landscape beautifully in a story that reaches out in several directions – it’s about, among other things, communities of forgotten people, the intricacies of gender dynamics and the ways in which violence against women can be insidiously veiled. The story comes to rest in a way that’s both somber and gratifying.” — Stephanie Zacharek, Time
“Sheridan’s beady, inquisitive script scrutinises all its characters’ credentials in turn... But when it comes down to it – and during some blistering, Sam Peckinpah-like set-pieces, in which the bullets strike with the force of thunderbolts, it most emphatically does – they’re just people with guns in the middle of nowhere, each ready to fight their corner to the bitterest of ends.” — Robbie Collin, The Telegraph