Taylor Sheridan
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Connections, in both directions
It's a tremendously bad series of scenes: first we get a flashback triggered by absolutely nothing except a cheesy cut that demonstrates (as if the characterisation of Banner didn't already suggests as much) that Sheridan saw The Silence of the Lambs , just like the rest of us, and it's sufficiently harrowing in its juxtaposition of love and hate that it works on some visceral, primal level.
The scene is a reference to a parallel one, coming at the end of The Silence of the Lambs.
If the film has a failing, it is its derivativeness, references to "The Silence of the Lambs" beginning with Cory's entrance in that second scene, continued with the arrival of green F.B.I. agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen), a young woman seeking justice for another young woman in an unwelcoming environment.
And the murder/mystery setup itself isn’t too far removed from “The Silence of the Lambs,” but with an unhurried nature that absolutely doesn’t match this concept.
The single element that probably received a rewrite is an encounter that pits a partially-blinded Jane armed and searching for a bad guy in constrained quarters – a probable nod to one of Sicario ’s more tense and suspenseful sequences (or more likely to the film’s biggest inspiration, The Silence of the Lambs ).
There is also a final act of vengeance that takes place on a snowy mountaintop — and it seems a bit reductive, as if “Jeremiah Johnson” had merged with “Walking Tall.” “Wind River” isn’t, in the end, as enthralling a movie as “Hell or High Water” or “Sicario” (and it probably won’t come close to matching either one of them commercially), yet it’s skillful and compelling enough to prove that Taylor Sheridan , as a director, has the goods.
Cory is almost, but not quite, a fully dimensional character; he comes off as the spiritual descendant of the mountain man in “Jeremiah Johnson” who told Robert Redford to keep his nose in the wind, and his eyes along the skyline.
No Country for Old Men (2007)
Directed by Joel Coen
influenced Wind River (2017)
Themes Music Visuals
Not since 2007’s No Country for Old Men has the western genre felt so invigorated and full of life.
To place the film in a specific genre is difficult, as it incapsulates several; the score is reminiscent of Hell or High Water , there’s the underlying intensity as seen in No Country for Old Men , there’s the persistent ‘whodunnit’ narrative similar to Prisoners .
As Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ windy score elicits primal moans of the wild, Sheridan works with cinematographer Ben Richardson (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”) to paint a Coen-style atmosphere, recalling the bloody snow of “Fargo” (1996) and anthropological critique of “No Country for Old Men” (2007).
At times it reminded me of “No Country for Old Men” and “Winter’s Bone” and last year’s “Hell or High Water,” and (in the case of one character) it had me thinking about “The Silence of the Lambs” — but this near-masterpiece of mood and character study stands on its own as one of the very best movies I’ve seen this decade.
The desolate landscape is spectacularly captured by cinematographer Ben Richardson - reminiscent of the Robert Mitchum classic "Track of the Cat" and even the more recent "The Revenant".
The 2017 crime thriller “Wind River” touched on this problem of U.S. law enforcement often sidelining Native American female crime victims, compared to white females who are victims of the same crimes.
The similarly themed and far more high profile film, Wind River starring Jeremy Renner was an introduction to this idea.
What’s more, centering the story on a Native hero banishes the White-savior staleness and attendant sensation of misery tourism that afflicted Wind River (2017), another feature that ostensibly tackled the subject of MMIWG.
That may be harsh, but unlike with Wind River director Wladyka never shifts Catch the Fair One ’s narrative focus (and as a result, audience sympathies) to anyone other than the Indigenous women in question.
He calls Clint Eastwood’s “Unforgiven” the most important influence on his film and if you’ve seen its climax, you’ll recall Eastwood’s character magically escaping bullets fired from at least five different firearms at point blank range.
Sheridan has professed admiration for Clint Eastwood’s towering anti-Western “Unforgiven” and dark-night-of-the-soul dramas from Michael Mann.
As Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ windy score elicits primal moans of the wild, Sheridan works with cinematographer Ben Richardson (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”) to paint a Coen-style atmosphere, recalling the bloody snow of “Fargo” (1996) and anthropological critique of “No Country for Old Men” (2007).
The film draws from the Coen Brothers – have you seen a film set in a frigid, snowy American landscape in the last 20 years and not thought of “Fargo”?
Hell or High Water (2016)
Directed by David Mackenzie
influenced Wind River (2017), Those Who Wish Me Dead (2021)
Completely different tonally but also coming to Sundance with a ton of star power is Taylor Sheridan ’s “Wind River,” the third part of a thematic trilogy by the writer of “ Sicario ” and “ Hell or High Water ,” who also makes his directorial debut here.
The directorial debut of Sicario and Hell or High Water writer Taylor Sheridan, the film focuses on Cory Lambert ( Jeremy Renner ), a Wyoming Fish and Wildlife employee who kills coyotes and mountain lions along a remote mountain range for a living.
It’s rare for someone’s directorial debut to be “highly anticipated,” but Taylor Sheridan’s police/western hybrid “Wind River” definitely qualifies, given that over the past two years, his scripts for “Sicario” and “Hell Or High Water” have been made into excellent, high-class action films.
It’s a long while before the implication of this throwaway line becomes clear, although anyone who’s seen Taylor Sheridan’s tersely didactic “Hell or High Water” should already know that the emerging scribe — here directing one of his own scripts for the first time — doesn’t really do throwaway lines.
It’s the third film written and the first one directed by Taylor Sheridan, who penned Sicario and Hell Or High Water .
'Hell or High Water' scribe Taylor Sheridan makes his debut behind the camera with this Wyoming-set mystery starring Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen.
Much is contributed by the stellar lensing of Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild) and the beautifully spooky score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, which so mournfully echoes the one Cave created for The Proposition (2005).
With the aid of the cinematographer Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild), Sheridan makes the landscape itself—snowswept, dotted with trees and outcroppings of rock, carved up by the treads of snowmobiles—a character as vivid as the human ones: austere, secretive, and ominous.
Also very real (though shot in snowy Utah, not Wyoming) is the imposing Western landscape richly photographed by “Beasts of the Southern Wild” cinematographer Ben Richardson in areas so remote that equipment and crew needed snowmobiles and snowcats to get to the locations.
The icy landscapes are beautiful framed by cinematographer Ben Richardson ( Beasts of the Southern Wild , 2012), who gives the film’s frosty geography width and depth.
As Nick Cave and Warren Ellis’ windy score elicits primal moans of the wild, Sheridan works with cinematographer Ben Richardson (“Beasts of the Southern Wild”) to paint a Coen-style atmosphere, recalling the bloody snow of “Fargo” (1996) and anthropological critique of “No Country for Old Men” (2007).
With the color white predominating, cinematographer Ben Richardson's ("Beasts of the Southern Wild") achievement cannot be overstated, his crisp imagery using the color to enclose, unite and separate.
In many ways, this feels like a spiritual follow up to 2013’s parental nightmare Prisoners , directed by Denis Villeneuve (whom Sheridan has worked with in the past).
You’ll recall that Roach edited Denis Villeneuve’s underrated gem “Prisoners” (2013), which opened with Hugh Jackman on a similar hunt as Renner, who guards a flock of sheep from a predatory wolf.
And for some reason, revenge feels much grosser when it’s treated with grave seriousness, like in Prisoners , rather than openly played for genre thrills, like in John Wick or Kill Bill.
As a director, Sheridan demonstrates a grand potential for creating provocative, original works, although late in "Wind River," he channels Quentin Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" in an awkward Mexican-standoff scene that does not end well.
Much is contributed by the stellar lensing of Ben Richardson (Beasts of the Southern Wild) and the beautifully spooky score by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, which so mournfully echoes the one Cave created for The Proposition (2005).
From John Ford’s Fort Apache (1948), which honed in on the way white people on the frontier dealt with the horrors of colonialism, to more recent ‘white saviour’ films including Dances with Wolves (Kevin Costner, 1990) which take up specific struggles to exemplify white heroism, this kind of racism has become customary in film.
As a thriller that intends to deliver a message by uncovering the vicious secrets of a hermetic, lawless town, Wind River is no Bad Day at Black Rock (1955).
Wind River plays like a forlorn Western—similar to those late-period John Ford masterpieces such as The Searchers in which John Wayne allowed himself to be vulnerable.
Jettisoning the moral tensions of his “Frontier Trilogy” to a fault, this is typical action-thriller fare that recalls the bygone era of Peter Weir’s Witness or Ron Howard’s Backdraft , and the film offers base thrills we’ve all seen time and time again; but where the story lacks in meat on its bones, it more than makes up for with its character work.
Completely different tonally but also coming to Sundance with a ton of star power is Taylor Sheridan ’s “Wind River,” the third part of a thematic trilogy by the writer of “ Sicario ” and “ Hell or High Water ,” who also makes his directorial debut here.
The directorial debut of Sicario and Hell or High Water writer Taylor Sheridan, the film focuses on Cory Lambert ( Jeremy Renner ), a Wyoming Fish and Wildlife employee who kills coyotes and mountain lions along a remote mountain range for a living.
It’s rare for someone’s directorial debut to be “highly anticipated,” but Taylor Sheridan’s police/western hybrid “Wind River” definitely qualifies, given that over the past two years, his scripts for “Sicario” and “Hell Or High Water” have been made into excellent, high-class action films.
His penchant for rugged elementalism has never been put to such evocative effect, and the witty terseness he’s used to define his wise-cracking characters (think of Josh Brolin in “Sicario”) is transmuted into a parade of epic compositions that consistently teeter on the line between funny and fucked up.
It’s the third film written and the first one directed by Taylor Sheridan, who penned Sicario and Hell Or High Water .
His breakout script Sicario, that masterpiece of moral complexity and riveting action, was brought to screens by Denis Villeneuve in 2015 and will soon receive a sequel.
In The Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling’s fear is a bit like the fear felt by Ripley in Alien or Laurie Strode in Halloween.
While at least Renner’s character, whose uneasy inclusion in the Native American community is begrudgingly referenced by the drug addled brother of the dead girl, is not made to be mixed-race in the same way Val Kilmer’s character in 1992’s Thunderheart was concocted, Sheridan’s film still recalls the old Hollywood hat trick of prizing the perspective of a white male protagonist unnecessarily.
Sheridan never indulges cliched views of Native American life; there's none of the mysticism that circulated through Michael Apted's 1992 thriller Thunderheart, which takes place on a reservation in South Dakota.
They are an opportunity for Sheridan to showcase his supporting actors, including Graham Greene, who previously appeared in 1992’s Thunderheart, another film about an FBI agent investigating a murder on a reservation.
He equates violence with redemption in a way that leaves Wind River inferior to Sean Penn’s The Pledge , the film it most resembles, which challenged the connection between vengeance and closure.