Wind River

Wind River ultimately aims to be an existential survival movie, but that aim is rarely true.

Sheridan ends his story brilliantly, the last ten minutes a startling display of emotional elasticity that left me flabbergasted.

Most of the dialogue would look good on a series of commemorative tea towels. It certainly doesn't belong on the lips of an actor as gifted as Renner.

Wind River's strong sense of place differentiates the film from the rest of the noir genre.

Taylor Sheridan's flair for creating heartland epics is undimmed, but it's hard not to wonder what someone with more directing chops, and the will to hit the accelerator, would have done with it.

Renner is on good form here (and rocking a hard-to-pull-off pair of dungarees) as the sensitive, protective Cory, and as a genre exercise, it works.

Wind River is a well crafted, but straightforward, thriller with an interesting setting and social context.

Sheridan’s direction matches his screenwriting – steady and assured. His knack for pacing keeps the story bumping along all while building tension and fleshing out his characters.

Through every snowflake and gunshot, Taylor Sheridan cuts to the marrow and keeps "Wind River" firmly on track with its layered stages of discovery.

Wind River has the tonal sparsity of a Cormac McCarthy novel, the moral justice of a revisionist Western, and hits many beats that a detective procedural might.