Review of Wind River (2017) by A T — 01 Sep 2017

This movie is fodder for "Mystery Science Theater 3000" with its cheesy dialogue and totally unnecessary scenes (extended banter with a coroner about medical definitions, running to the bathroom to do soul searching after someone else's sad story, a random scene of finding someone in the act of serious self mutilation, which it turns out no one,including an FBI agent, seems too concerned with).

More seriously, it seems like the point of the movie is to bring awareness to crime against Native Americans. If it actually did that, it would have at least been interesting and important. What it actually does is make a white "cowboy" out to be a brave wholesome hero and a modern Native American family, the helpless victims he selflessly seeks justice for. At one point, the Native American father is shown as the stereotype all Americans are more familiar with; his face painted in tribal war colors.

There is also an on-screen quote at the end of the movie with statistics about missing Native American women, but it seems shoe-horned in to make the "awareness" aspect of the movie blatantly obvious (because it isn't obvious otherwise). The statistics are eye-opening for sure, but no one in this movie was ever considered "missing". It was tangentially related at best and it was just a weird choice for it being the last thing viewers see.