Wind River (2017) | Movie News & Review | - Pop Movee

Pop Movee - It's about MOVIES!

WIND RIVER (2017) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

wind river (2017) movie

Genre | Crime Thriller

Classification | MA 15+

Running time | 111 minutes

Released | 10 August 2017

cast

Jeremy Renner ... Cory Lambert
Elizabeth Olsen ... Jane Banner
Graham Greene ... Ben
Apesanahkwat ... Dan Crowheart
Tantoo Cardinal ... Alice Crowheart
Gil Birmingham ... Martin
Althea Sam ... Annie
Kelsey Asbille ... Natalie
Julia Jones ... Wilma

director

Taylor Sheridan

writer

Taylor Sheridan ... (written by)

cinematographer

Ben Richardson

music

Nick Cave ... (score composed and performed by)
Warren Ellis ... (score composed and performed by)

film editor

Gary Roach

box office result

Worldwide $40,400,000

Australia $429,407

North America $33,800,859

the best dialogue

Cory Lambert: I'd like to tell you it gets easier, but it doesn't. If there's a comfort, you get used to the pain if you let yourself, I went to a grief seminar in Casper. Don't know why, just, It hurt so much, I was searching for anything that could make it go away That's what I wanted this seminar to do, make it go away. The instructor come up to me after the seminar was over, sat beside me and said, "I got good news and bad news. Bad news is you'll never be the same. You'll never be whole. Ever. What was taken from you can't be replaced. You're daughter's gone. Now the good news, as soon as you accept that, as soon as you let yourself suffer, allow yourself to grieve, You'll be able to visit her in your mind, and remember all the joy she gave you. All the love she knew. Right now, you don't even have that, do you?" He said, "that's what not accepting this will rob from you". If you shy from the pain of it, then you rob yourself of every memory of her, my friend. Every one. From her first step to her last smile. You'll kill 'em all. Take the pain, Take the pain, Martin. It's the only way to keep her with you.

Cory Lambert: Luck don't live out here.

Martin: [on his daughter's murderer] How did he go out?

Cory Lambert: With a whimper.

WIND RIVER (2017) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

WIND RIVER (2017) STORY SYNOPSIS

Cory Lambert is a wildlife officer who finds the body of an 18-year-old woman on an American Indian reservation in snowy Wyoming. When the autopsy reveals that she was raped, FBI agent Jane Banner arrives to investigate. Teaming up with Lambert as a guide, the duo soon find that their lives are in danger while trying to solve the mystery of the teen's death.

WIND RIVER (2017) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty | Review date 1 August 2017
Pop Movee Rating ⭐⭐⭐⭐½

Taylor Sheridan is a movie maker on a roll. In 2015, he wrote the acclaimed Denis Villeneuve film, SICARIO; garnering critical praise for the mix of action and suspense woven together in a tale about a very real problem - America’s war against Mexican drugs. In 2016, HELL OR HIGH WATER told the story of two brothers who band together to stop a Texas bank from foreclosing on their mother’s property. Sheridan’s screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, an AACTA and countless other industry awards. 2017 sees the release of WIND RIVER, a film written and directed by Sheridan. It’s not a bad effort from a guy, who only a few years ago, was a television character actor best best known for his portrayal as Deputy Chief David Hale on the hugely popular FX series Sons of Anarchy.

WIND RIVER is not as nerve-wracking as SICARIO or as reckless in spirit as HELL OR HIGH WATER. It’s a movie that deliberately, quietley reflects the plight of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho American Indian tribes of Wyoming, whose natural instincts to move with the seasons has been curbed with the creation of the Wind River Reservation; a tract of land that binds them to a place no one would choose to be for half the time because of its cruel Winter climate. Sheridan’s new movie tells the story of Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), a Department of Wildlife Ranger whose job it is to track and kill predators that wander on to the Reservation. Cory heads out to look for a Mountain Lion that’s been hunting local cattle but comes across the dead body of a young Native American woman half buried in the snow. Recent tragedy comes flooding back for Lambert, as the dead woman turns out to be the best friend of his daughter, who is also the daughter of his best friend, Martin (Gil Birmingham). With a huge storm setting in, time is against local Sheriff Ben (Graham Greene), who has called in the FBI to help investigate the murder scene.

The locals are not surprised when young, inexperienced FBI Agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) arrives at Wind River completely ill-prepared, having being despatched from the Las Vegas office some 1150 kilometres. It seems that the murder of a Native American woman is not worth the time and energy of more experienced Federal officers. Banner’s efforts to help are frustrated locals, including the Chief Medical Examiner, who concludes Natalie Hanson died from natural causes created by the amount of cold air in her lungs. In a last-ditch effort to help, Banner enlists Lambert, a natural tracker of predators, to assist her investigation. Banner works the traditional “procedural” parts of the case, while Lambert uses his skill to work out where Natalie fled from prior to her death. WIND RIVER’S 107 minute journey manages to highlight the plight of the Native Americans in the Reservation without preaching. Among the pain and suffering, there’s also moments of lightness that show a glimpse of the people who roamed the mountains and plains of Wyoming before it was Westernized. It truly is a bittersweet tale.

With WIND RIVER, Tyler Sheridan has now completed a trilogy of movies that have held the mirror up to the great United States and what reflects back is surely not what any of the country’s forebears, Native or Colonists, could have imagined. Sheridan’s view is that of an America that is broken and divided. Broken by drugs. Broken by corporate greed. Broken by ill-conceived plans that have inflicted a slow-creeping genocide. His writing is both social and political, but it’s not hysterical. It’s not so much about what the problem is; it’s more about how do people get back to living when life’s myriad obstacles conspire to thwart them at every turn. His answer, albeit simple, harkens back to the very principle upon which his country was founded and was labelled “Rugged Individualism” by America’s World War I President, Herbert Hoover. Ultimately, a person helps themselves first and, when done with that, extends the hand of friendship to the person next to them. It’s a message well heeded.