Review of Wind River (2017) by Ted B — 29 May 2018

Director Taylor Sheridan slowly, ominously unfolds a murder mystery on an Indian reservation in the hard cold winter of Wyoming , a drama with a muted , slow build, like the most emotionally complex of pieces of music, which brings together a tracker (Jeremy Renner)_ and an FBI agent (Elizabeth Olson).

Less a mystery, actually,than an effectively tooled investigative procedural, the investigators, a pair from realities alienated from each other in thinking and personality --one taciturn,deliberate, the other vocal, questioning, proactive--sift and probe and poke through generations of male culture,both white and Native American and makes you how the worst aspects of human inclination--seeking power, dominance, submission, exploitation--are made worse tenfold at the local level with the merciless scramble for diminishing resources.

Political implications aside, this is a beautifully shot film--snow capped mountains and forests have rarely been photographed this beautifully --and the choice to lens many wide shots to give a scope of the bigness of the land and the harshness of the weather serves as a poignant contrast.