Wind River

Un suspenso perfectamente dirigido que nos deja frío y un drama realmente muy triste sobre la mayor pérdida de vidas en un solo paquete. La densa atmósfera del lugar y una hábil referencia a la posición social de los indios en la América contemporánea. Muy potencial ganador del Óscar. (08.07.2017)

Después de una serie bastante larga de películas mediocres y sin mucho interés, pensé que Wind River cambiaría las cosas y me daría un respiro cinematográfico, así me lo aseguraban mi entorno y mis amigos. No sabía qué esperar en cuanto al contenido, pero aposté por las críticas elogiosas. Pero creo que vi una película diferente a los demás: una historia aburrida y nada original, todo lo he visto o leído en algún lugar y, en general, no me gustan los dramas/policiacos en lugares remotos donde siempre está nevando y todos los personajes están deprimidos o trastornados; de hecho, no he visto una sola película ambientada en ese tipo de entorno que me haya gustado. En este caso, ni siquiera puedo hablar de un policiaco, antes de que uno se dé cuenta, todo se resuelve y luego solo queda un aburrimiento breve. Si en ese paisaje nevado no apareciera Olsen, sino tal vez Jeff Bridges con un sombrero y una prótesis dental, tal vez me habría ido de la sala. Probablemente la decepción del año, la próxima vez no me dejaré llevar por las excelentes reseñas. (12.10.2017)

If you like movies and watch a large number of them every month, including the new ones, then you will appreciate a movie that is written so perfectly from start to finish that it's a pleasure to watch. That's probably why I would simply describe why I gave the film five stars. I had a feeling that from the beginning till the end I was watching a crime film with everything it entails. There were no complicated explanations, but an amazingly chilly atmosphere and wonderful locations. Everything fits together perfectly, and you enjoy not only the suffering of Elizabeth Olsen, but also Jeremy Renner, who became the lone fighter for justice the moment he put on the white overalls and ventured alone into the wild. I was excited. I didn’t miss a single minute of this movie. And the best part is that you can really feel that Taylor Sheridan is behind all of that. You can sense the chilling atmosphere of Sicario, but also the dangerous shoot offs of the film Hell or High Water. And yet you know that this film is in its way completely unique. Hopefully, Sheridan will maintain that diligence. When it comes to filmmaking craft, Wind River is one of the best films I saw in 2017. (12.10.2017)

Taylor Sheridan isn't as good a director as Denis Villeneuve, but he learned a lot from him, both good (his work with landscapes, drawing out the suspense to the limits of tolerability, shocking explosions of violence) and bad (“deliberateness” and unnecessary literalness). The investigation of the crime serves mainly as a means to create an atmosphere of ruination and total disillusion (as in film noir, in which the revealing of the perpetrator often occurs rather by chance than as the result of piecing together individual clues) and as an excuse to uncover something rotten in the midst of the community, similarly as in Top of the Lake and Wilderness, though on a much smaller area, which takes its toll in the form of overwrought scenes that try to say too much at once (a woman sits in her bedroom, crying and cutting her arm; another woman sees her, closes the door without a word and leaves). Furthermore, the realistic tone is disturbed by balladic dialogue about the frozen hellscape and undefeatable evil (which would have come across much better in the pages of a book) and the use of western archetypes, shifting the drama of people anchored in a particular social reality to a timeless parable about hunters and predators and the clash of two declining cultures. The combining of these two narrative levels could have been smoother and the treatment of the female protagonist lost among men who much better understand what’s happening around them didn’t have to be so reminiscent of Sicario, and sometimes it might have been enough for the characters to simply sit and be quiet, but the catharsis that Wind River delivers in the climax is so powerful that it absolutely outweighs the unconvincingness of the film’s individual parts. 75% (10.07.2017)

An Indian girl was found murdered in the middle of Wyoming. An FBI agent arrives on the scene to find the killer with the help of a local tracker. Little does she know that this inhospitable land may be a bit too much for her to handle. Taylor Sheridan's directorial debut follows in the footsteps of his earlier films, and this time we get an atmospheric, gritty and manly piece where there's plenty of time for everything, but the slowly building atmosphere is ultimately so intense that you'll be biting your nails with suspense. And root for Jeremy Renner to win an Oscar. (16.08.2017)