Wind River

After working all weekend, I finally saw Wind River, hoping it would be like the Val Kilmer movie Thunderheart. There is a murder mystery to solve on the reservation, but mostly the detective work is done by reading tracks in the snow and confronting suspects in brutally violent shootouts. It's a good, emotional movie, though a shame that once again a story about Native people has to star white actors as the protagonists instead of any of the Native characters. Still, I liked those actors in the Avengers movie, and they do a good job here. Also, the writer and director Taylor Sheridan shows a proper respect for the Native characters, like John Fusco did in his movies about Native Americans. Sheridan is less mystical and more gloomy reality, though. At least he shot the movie in full color, not that stupid blue tint that "serious" gritty movies keep using lately.


Wind River claims to be "inspired by true events" and the final text points out that no one knows how many Native women are missing and murdered in the United States. So we're even worse off than Canada, which at least started an inquiry into their 4,000 cases of missing aboriginal women. This is a real problem throughout Indian Country, though this movie seems to imply that it's specifically the bleak cold environment of this remote Wyoming landscape that is making survival so difficult for people. (Technically the young victim Natalie dies from cold air after running away from an assault and rape.) Jeremy Renner's character is a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent who discovers Natalie's frozen body while hunting for a mountain lion who is attacking livestock in the area. At one point Cory finally discovers the female mountain lion and her cubs, but he refrains from shooting them, and he mumbled so much that I didn't hear why he left them alone. Was it because she started hunting wild deer again, or he'd already seen so much killing lately, or he was focused on his new mission to hunt a human predator?

That would be my main complaint with the movie, how much mumbling dialogue we get. Even an early moment when Cory is teaching his son to ride a horse is spoiled because I barely made out Cory saying "That's not cowboy. That's Arapaho," to acknowledge his son's half Native heritage. Cory seems to identify a lot with his ex-wife's family, and they have a tragic backstory because their teen daughter Emily, a friend of Natalie's, also went missing and died years ago. So this case brings bad memories forth, and he reaches out to Natalie's father who is grieving too. They have some good character moments together. However, I will say that Cory crossed a line when he tried to speak for Native people. When he catches the rapist, the guy explains his motives as being drunk and depressed due to being stuck in the bleak place, all "snow and silence". Cory responds, "I've got family that were forced to live here, and all they have are the snow and the silence." He seems to be speaking not only about his immediate Native relatives, but about the tribe as a whole being forced onto the reservation. How dare he speak like that, as a white man, no matter how much he identifies with them. At the very least, he could have said, "Natalie's family only have the snow and the silence because you took their daughter from them" if he wanted to be accusing and righteous on somebody's behalf. That I think was the only clunker of Cory's actions in my opinion. Still, it would have been better if the part had just not been written white in the first place.

As for the FBI agent played by Elizabeth Olsen, she comes to the reservation unprepared for the harsh conditions, physically and emotionally. But Jane adapts after a while and is truly committed to solving the case, even though the FBI won't send her additional resources due to the coroner not ruling the case a homicide (because Natalie died from the cold, not the attack itself). Since she lacks FBI backup, Jane turns to Cory for help as well as the local native sheriff since they know the area and the people better. She worries about Cory interrogating a suspect illegally, but gives in after they find out the information properly anyway once they discover a second body. Then Jane finally gets some backup from off the res, I think maybe Wyoming's state troops, though I wasn't sure of their uniforms. They go to interrogate some suspects at an oil rig while Corey decides to follow some snow tracks that he thinks will lead to the killer more directly. Investigation at the oil rig quickly turns tense among the trigger-happy men, yelling about jurisdiction and trespassing, and only Jane is able to assert her federal authority to get them to stand down.

Of course then we get the flashback finally telling us what happened to Natalie and the other victim. Back in the present, Jane gets severely wounded in the ensuing shootout, but she continues to reload her gun and shoot back, wounding the rapist who flees. Corey eventually goes after him, to give him a fitting punishment for Natalie's death. Afterward, Corey comforts Jane in the hospital and insists that she saved herself, fighting to survive. They still grieve over Natalie, then Corey returns to the reservation to tell Natalie's father what happened. At first I thought we were going to get a super tragic ending with Natalie's mother and father killing themselves out of grief, but thankfully that was just a red herring. Natalie's brother Chip has actually called his parents for the first time in years, apparently wanting to reconnect in the wake of Natalie's death. So there's some hope, but for the moment Natalie's father needs to sit in silence for a while. Corey joins him, perhaps finding some peace of his own, though of course Emily's death remains unsolved. As do so many real life missing cases.