A THRILLER THAT CHILLS TO THE BONE
Wintry Wyoming, some ice-cool acting and a flurry of snowmobile chases all combine in...
There can be no surer sign that summer is over and that darker, colder days will soon be with us, than the arrival of the first wintry thriller. For, as we all know by now, where snow lies deep and daylight is scarce – and the locals have to find some way to pass the long, dark nights – murder cannot be far away.
On the big screen it’s a combination that’s worked – often famously well – for the likes of Fargo, Insomnia and The Frozen Ground, while on TV this snowy offshoot of Scandi-noir is fast becoming a genre of its own thanks to the success of series such as Trapped and Fortitude.
Wind River, the latest cinematic arrival, not only stands comparison with the best of them, it also serves as a timely reminder of what a good actor Jeremy Renner can be. It’s not that the Hurt Locker star has been making bad career choices of late but he’s certainly been making commercial ones, contributing mainly supporting turns to the successful likes of the Mission: Impossible, Bourne and, of course, Avengers franchises. It’s courtesy of the latter that these days he is best known as the bow-and-arrow-firing Hawkeye.
So it’s refreshing to see him starring in that rare thing – a grown-up film arty enough to win a prize at this year’s Cannes Film Festival and yet commercial enough – I hope – to do some fairly serious business at the box office. Renner plays Cory Lambert, a hunter and tracker with the Wyoming Fish and Wildlife Service. Normally he spends his days shooting wolves and mountain lions that have grown too fond of attacking farm animals, but when he finds a young Native American woman’s body half-buried in the snow, this quiet and unhappy man begins to display a whole range of other talents.
So when young and relatively inexperienced FBI agent Jane Banner (fellow Avengers alumnus Elizabeth Olsen) arrives in town to investigate, it’s no surprise that she asks Cory to join her on what soon becomes clear is a rape and murder investigation.
The film is written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, perhaps best known as the writer responsible for Sicario and Hell Or High Water, for which he won an Oscar nomination. With his second feature, it’s obvious he’s no slouch as a director either.
Time and again, as he layers on the wintry atmosphere and lets the story slowly unfold, I was reminded of Insomnia, one of Christopher Nolan’s early films. Good company to be in.
Does he lay it on a bit too thick? Just occasionally, perhaps. For as we gradually learn the reason for Lambert’s sadness and watch as Banner’s inexperience begins to show, there’s no doubt that one or two lines of dialogue feel overpolished – ‘I know you’re looking for clues but you’re missing all the signs’, Lambert tells her – just as one or two supporting performances threaten to go over the top. Then again, there’s one tearjerking scene that Renner shares with Gil Birmingham (Billy Black in the Twilight films) that’s top drawer. The luminously watchable Olsen, who sparkled in Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011, is excellent too, even if FBI agents are looking awfully young these days. But there’s no doubt the film has its problems, and I’m not just talking about a slight surfeit of speeding snowmobiles. The first comes with a knock on a door and suddenly we’re into an extended flashback that, one suspects, is destined to reveal all. After almost 90 minutes of linear narrative, this sudden leap backwards feels jarring, an impression reinforced by the violence becoming explicit rather than implicit and a shoot-out that teeters close to comedy. As a result, I found the final 10 minutes tinged with mild disappointment.
A more debatable problem emerged as I reflected on the no doubt well-intentioned final captions highlighting the lack of official statistics about missing Native American women. The plight of Native Americans is a subject close to Sheridan’s heart, but he might have made more impact if the film he’d just made about one aspect of this hadn’t featured two central protagonists who were white. It didn’t totally spoil it for me but it did take off just a little of the shine. Shame.
‘A grown-up film arty enough to win a Cannes prize but commercial enough to do serious box office business’