Wind River

The Indian reservation of Wind River is not a place that you would choose for a pleasant luxury vacation. It is an inhospitable, sparsely populated place far from civilization, where only those who have no other choice or those who do not need much in life and do not want much from it live. The discovery of a raped Native American girl's body brings together local predator hunter Cory and inexperienced FBI agent Jane. The subsequent investigation can be considered a counterbalance to crime thrillers based on effects and shocking plot twists. It is an intimate story full of weight, bitterness, and melancholy. Although I did not find in it the promised "mystery," the majestic nature of the freezing mountains and the slowly dosed tension was more than enough for me. Taylor Sheridan is primarily a screenwriter, and it might have been better to look for a more established name for the director's position, but it is not that crucial. Rather, I would like to emphasize again: do not expect anything relaxing, this is an adult drama with a slower pace and without clever screenwriting tricks, built on acting performances and tragedies of ruined human lives. Wind River is a film that you don't necessarily have to see in movie theaters, but you shouldn't miss it. It is an above-average genre film that may not elicit a burst of superlatives from most viewers, but it reliably does its job. Overall impression: 75%. (10/19/2017)

A crisp, snowy crime movie with a chilling veneer. In the middle of the wilderness, hunter Cory Lambert finds the body of a raped Indian girl whose lungs burst in the frost. Who is responsible? The story is simple, but its strength lies in details. Elaborate, lifelike characters (typical Renner) and an atmosphere of ruin hides behind every footstep in the snow. The slow tempo suits the story perfectly. Recriminations, heart-searching, strong emotions. Action is fairly scarce, but the finale shootout is worth it. Very happy. P.S: A perfect explanation for why to be wary of seemingly friendly drunks. (10/21/2017)

As a director, Taylor Sheridan is looking to find his own style and optimal storytelling rhythm, but as a screenwriter he excels once more. As in Sicario and Hell or High Water, he creates another rough space that seems to exist outside of our reality. And just like in Sicario, he brings a somewhat naive woman into it who needs a guide and initiators to survive here. This means that an orthodox supporter of feminism will not find what they are looking for in Wind River. Wyoming in this film is above all a place for mourning, despair and vanishing traditions, a snow canvas of misery and surrender, a land of hunters and trackers, in which women disappear without a trace. Sheridan incorporates a personal story of reconciliation into the detective-thriller, about the acceptance of a world in which "happiness lives in cities" and people outside of them have at most enough time to mourn and fall into despair. Jeremy Renner is admirable, economical as a hunting beast, and vulnerable when he loses the scent. This is the best performance of his career, I have no doubt about that. Sheridan is slowly preparing the background for the last act, which does not culminate in a shootout or harsh retrospective, but a final dialogue in which everything essential is hidden. It’s about people who live on the land that has been stolen from them losing their bond with their ancestors. They have no vision of a better future, only the sorrow that needs to be accepted. Wind River is a melancholic film-portrait of a place, a more action-based genre version of Manchester by the Sea. Sheridan writes words, landscapes and characters that touch me deeply. It’s an eternal pity that the Czech viewer will not get to see Wind River in the distribution... (07/07/2017)

Taylor Sheridan isn't as good a director as Denis Villeneuve, but he learned a lot from him, both good (his work with landscapes, drawing out the suspense to the limits of tolerability, shocking explosions of violence) and bad (“deliberateness” and unnecessary literalness). The investigation of the crime serves mainly as a means to create an atmosphere of ruination and total disillusion (as in film noir, in which the revealing of the perpetrator often occurs rather by chance than as the result of piecing together individual clues) and as an excuse to uncover something rotten in the midst of the community, similarly as in Top of the Lake and Wilderness, though on a much smaller area, which takes its toll in the form of overwrought scenes that try to say too much at once (a woman sits in her bedroom, crying and cutting her arm; another woman sees her, closes the door without a word and leaves). Furthermore, the realistic tone is disturbed by balladic dialogue about the frozen hellscape and undefeatable evil (which would have come across much better in the pages of a book) and the use of western archetypes, shifting the drama of people anchored in a particular social reality to a timeless parable about hunters and predators and the clash of two declining cultures. The combining of these two narrative levels could have been smoother and the treatment of the female protagonist lost among men who much better understand what’s happening around them didn’t have to be so reminiscent of Sicario, and sometimes it might have been enough for the characters to simply sit and be quiet, but the catharsis that Wind River delivers in the climax is so powerful that it absolutely outweighs the unconvincingness of the film’s individual parts. 75% (07/10/2017)

A very atmospheric, cold crime film with one immensely tense and thrilling scene that the screenwriter (and director) allow to be interspersed with another, even more tense scene, which can then hit the viewer (who is prepared for anything) with something that we hardly ever see these days. Wind River is like an icy whiff of the good old film days, when crime films and thrillers cared mostly about characters, and when a duel between two people was enough for a memorable ending. (10/10/2017)