Wind River Cert 15 1hr 47mins
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.
Above, Elizabeth Olsen and Jeremy Renner starring in this frosty thriller as FBI Agent Jane Banner and Cory Bennet, hunter and tracker for Wyoming’s fish and Wildlife Service
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 winter 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.
Jeremy Renner and Gil Birmingham as Cory Lambert and Martin Hanson, whose daughter is raped and murdered
Time and again, as he layers on the wintry atmosphere and lets the story slowly unfold, I was reminded of Insomnia, one of the early films directed by the now great Christopher Nolan. That’s pretty 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 over-polished – ‘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 tear-jerking scene that Renner shares with Gil Birmingham (Billy Black in the Twilight films) that’s absolutely out of the top drawer.
The luminously watchable Olsen, who gave her first indication of her talent with Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011, is excellent too, even if FBI agents are looking awfully young these days.
Elizabeth Olsen (above) pours endless talent into this icy thriller after her highlight role in Martha Marcy May Marlene in 2011
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 into the past feels jarring, an impression reinforced by the violence becoming explicit rather than implicit and a shoot-out that teeters perilously close to comedy. As a result, I found the final ten 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 the number of 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.
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 (above) can be
SECOND SCREEN
It (15)
Rating: 
The Vault (15)
Rating: 
Everyone is supposed to be scared of clowns, right? Well, not me, not at least after sitting through more than two hours of It, an adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel. I was more bored and fed up than frightened – bored because it goes on so long, despite covering only half of King’s story, and fed up with a level of nastiness that has resulted in a film about a group of bullied 13-year-olds being given a certificate that rightly requires its audience to be at least two years older.
King’s novel was adapted for television in 1990, which I have to confess I’ve never seen. But I can only assume Tim Curry’s performance as the old clown-faced demon, Pennywise, was a lot scarier than the one rendered here by Bill Skarsgard.
If he wasn’t prone to suddenly biting off sweet little boys’ arms, this Pennywise really wouldn’t be frightening at all. Maybe that’s why director Andy Muschietti feels the need to ratchet up the nastiness. Obese mothers, sexually abusive fathers, bullies who like to carve their names in fat boys’ stomachs… But you can’t help but feel that the time for scary clowns has been and gone.
Francesca Eastwood (Clint Eastwood’s daughter) above in The Vault, a bank robbery film with added super natural chills
The Vault is one of those films that have no right to be as good as they are, given that it is that most unlikely of genre-defying hybrids – the bank robbery film with added, er… supernatural chills.
The opening is particularly strong, telling us that a bank robbery and subsequent siege have gone horribly wrong. So when the action proper begins in another bank hall, we’re sure the same thing will happen again.
But, after shady character after shady character enters the bank, our challenge is guessing which ones are the robbers. Eventually, of course, we find out. It’s an excellent opening, helped by taut editing. But be warned, we’re heading somewhere very strange indeed.