Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		1.5
Overall		4.0

Wind River Blu-ray Movie Review

Reservations not accepted.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 9, 2017

One of the most eye opening things I ever experienced as a kid was when my father took me to the Four Corners area, where Utah (where I grew up), Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico join in the only such “cross like” confluence of a quartet of state boundaries. It’s a somewhat barren region, though also remarkably scenic in its own almost atavistic way, but what raised my little boy eyebrows was the manifest poverty I saw a number of Native Americans living in throughout the region (the Navajo Nation actually manages the Four Corners Monument). I grew up in the era when most kids’ knowledge of “Indians” (as they were regularly called then) came from movie and television westerns, and where even when they were the “bad guys” (which they typically were), they were often adorned in feathered regalia and seemed muscular and well fed. To see an elderly Native American man wrapped in a scraggly blanket, gaunt, malnourished looking and barely conscious due to what I assume must have been heavy alcohol use, was in its own peculiar way a very formative image for me. According to the closing credits, Wind River was filmed in Utah (though it supposedly takes place in Wyoming), and while it’s purportedly about a murder investigation which brings a Fish and Wildlife worker named Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) and an FBI agent named Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) together in an unlikely alliance to solve the case, there’s a lingering subtext of socioeconomic misery which runs through this film and which perhaps unavoidably reminded me of my childhood event. The Native Americans in this film are resolutely proud, but they’re also almost inherently defeated in a very real way, feeling themselves trapped not just by the “situation” of their ethnicity, but also due to the very geography in which they live.

Taylor Sheridan provided the screenplays for Sicario and Hell or High Water, but Wind River marks his first “multi hyphenate” outing as both writer and director. Sicario and Hell or High Water each offered rather interesting takes on some quasi-western formulations (perhaps more appropriately southwestern in both of these cases). Wind River continues that developing tradition by offering a somewhat melancholic update on the whole idea of “cowboys vs. Indians”, albeit with regard to subtext rather than actual plotting. Wind River begins a bit discursively, with the frightening sight of a barefoot young woman obviously terrified and running across a vast frozen expanse in the middle of the night while a voiceover calmly proclaims the blandishments of a generic “meadow”. It’s a deliberately disjunctive way to begin the film, which thereafter settles into a more traditional narrative flow, with one notable exception which will be discussed below.

Cory is out and about in his guise as a Fish and Wildlife employee more or less tracking predators who are preying on local livestock. He drops by the home of Native American ex-wife Wilma (Julia Jones), ostensibly to pick up their little boy Casey (Tio Briones) for visitation, but it’s immediately apparent that there is something going on with these two that is inherently sad, perhaps even tragic. Wilma’s father has reported the death of one of his cattle on his property, and Cory wants to go out to investigate, taking Casey along. The first signs of the underlying sadness of Wind River with regard to Native Americans on their “designated” land comes as Cory drives by a bunch of ramshackle mobile homes (not even double wides), outside of which someone has hung a tattered American flag — upside down.

Cory and his ex-father-in-law quickly determine that a mountain lion is probably to blame for the carnage, and that in fact it is a mother training her cubs how to hunt. Cory decides to set off on a snowmobile to trace the animals’ whereabouts, which is when he discovers the frozen and obviously traumatized body of Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Chow), just as obviously the distraught young woman seen in the film’s opening scene. The authorities are alerted, which include tribal police chief Ben (the great Graham Greene), as well as young FBI agent Jane Bannon, who arrives spectacularly ill equipped to deal with the frigid weather conditions, after having been summoned from Las Vegas as the closest available investigator. Jane also seems emotionally ill equipped to handle the delicate dance required to deal with tribe members, as evidenced by a really disturbing scene involving Natalie’s father Martin (a superb Gil Birmingham) and mother (who is only seen briefly in what is the most disturbing part of this sequence).

The “procedural” elements proceed apace in Wind River, especially once a second corpse is found, but what really propels this film is the characters and relationships. There’s a bit of a pat feeling to the predictable denouement involving Cory’s sadness, a family tragedy that plays into his desire to bring Natalie’s killer or killers to justice, but even with some kind of rote plot formulations, Wind River regularly offers some very forceful emotional content on a whole variety of levels, not the least of which stems from various indignities suffered by assorted Native Americans.

All of this said, the “mystery” at the core of Wind River is never that compelling, and it’s potentially ruined one way or the other by a somewhat baffling structural artifice that reveals what led to Natalie’s fate right before what is ostensibly the “real” climax of the film. It’s an at least partially understandable artifice, but it’s almost willfully disruptive, and (for me, anyway) robbed the closing moments of the film of some power. It also presages a completely ludicrous showdown that defies logic (would any potential bad guys really attempt to take out a bevy of local and federal police officers just to protect themselves? — how would that work, anyway?). Perhaps notably, then, these potential misfires are only short speed bumps in what is an often emotionally devastating portrait of loss both personal and communal.

Wind River Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Wind River is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.39:1. Shot with Arri Alexa cameras and finished at a 2K DI, Wind River is rather surprisingly detailed throughout its many snowbound scenes, where at least close-ups offer some nicely complex looks at crystals and other frozen landscapes. There's a certain monotony to the palette in some of these scenes, but contrast is routinely excellent, helping to delineate between even quite slight variances in white tones. Some of the indoor material is a bit dreary looking, with less than optimal shadow detail, but even here close-ups can reveal very good to excellent levels of fine detail. Some of the wider vistas are extremely scenic and consistently offer excellent depth of field.

Wind River Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Wind River features a nicely detailed DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track. Surround activity is consistent courtesy of the constant outdoor material, where everything from panning sounds of snowmobiles trekking across frozen wastelands to the sharp report of rifle fire helps to keep sonic energy interesting. Even smaller scale dialogue scenes have nicely placed ambient environmental noises and good directionality. Fidelity is fine, and courtesy of at least one major (if somewhat ludicrous) gun showdown, dynamic range is also very wide.

Wind River Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Deleted Scenes (1080p; 3:11)


• Behind the Scenes Video Gallery (1080p; 9:54)

Wind River Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Sheridan ends this film with a couple of text overlays documenting how virtually every demographic group imaginable has a database keeping track of missing persons — with the exception of Native American women. That's certainly a salient piece of information, but it seems almost tangential to a much wider story of (emotional and physical) displacement and sadness that permeates this film. Wind River isn't especially "easy" to sit through, and it contains at least one glaring bit of hyperbole late in its going that defies logic, but it's another extremely compelling piece from Taylor Sheridan. Technical merits are strong, and Wind River comes Highly recommended.