With “Wind River,” screenwriter and now director Taylor Sheridan completes a trifecta of deeply layered, character-driven neo-Western crime dramas, and one that tops the other two, “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water.”
Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) is a hunter for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, precisely shooting wolves and other animals that threaten the humans in his Wyoming district. That district includes the Wind River Indian Reservation, where Lambert goes looking for a reported mountain lion. Instead he finds tracks in the snow that lead to a frozen 18-year-old woman, Natalie Hanson (Kelsey Asbille).
The reservation’s police chief, Ben (Graham Greene), calls in the FBI, which sends a rookie agent, Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen), to oversee the investigation.