Male order | 7 September 2017

The starting point for Taylor Sheridan’s crime-thriller Wind River is explicitly stated at the end when the following words come up on screen: ‘While missing person statistics are compiled for every other demographic [in the US], none exist for Native American women.’ A shocking fact that has to be worthy of a film, although whether this film is worthy of that fact, and isn’t just another genre melodrama featuring an American White Man coming to the rescue, has to be up for question. Also, it contains a brutal rape scene, just so you know. (I didn’t know. But wish I had, as I’d have likely steered clear.)

Directing from his own screenplay, Sheridan, who also wrote Sicario and Hell or High Water, has set this against a big landscape, and the cold, icy, desolate mountains of an Indian reservation in Wyoming as magnificently captured by the cinematographer Ben Richardson. The film opens with a young woman, Natalie (Kelsey Asbille), running barefoot and terrified through the snow before collapsing. The next day, her corpse is discovered by Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner), a hunter for the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Wolves, lions and coyotes are his usual prey, but, of course, he’ll soon be tracking a very different kind of animal.

Separated from his Native American wife after the death of their daughter, who died in similar circumstances, he is propelled by his own grief as well as a thirst for retribution. Because it’s federal land an FBI agent must be summoned, but as the FBI aren’t much bothered by dead Native American girls they send Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen), a clueless rookie who is otherwise based in Las Vegas. (She is very pretty, though; she has that on her side.)