Wind River – 7.9

If you think the West Texas of Hell or High Water was bleak, wait until you see Wyoming’s Wind River Indian Reservation in Taylor Sheridan’s follow-up film. Not only is it bleak topographically, economically and psychologically, we see it in the depth of winter, with snow blanketing all signs of life. But bleak can be beautiful, and here the photography creates a mood that is the takeaway, if not the point, of the movie. Jeremy Renner’s Marlboro Man and Elisabeth Olsen’s in-over-her-head FBI agent populate the landscape, along with sullen, disaffected Native Americans: I don’t think there is a smile in the entire 107 minutes. While the story is told almost exclusively through the eyes of Renner and Olsen’s characters, the scene that explains the mystery is somehow shown us through the perspective of the two corpses.