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movie review - Wind River

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is a surprisingly excellent story of a wildlife officer who becomes involved in the investigation into the murder of a friend's daughter. The two friends share the loss of children and they share being on the wrong end of the economic spectrum but they are divided by the cultural/racial lines of one being white and the other first nations. The callous disregard for murders in the indigenous population compounds other serious problems such as the hurricane-proportion disaster that is the US narcotics crisis. Even the oil industry surfaces in this thing.

One thing that this movie manages is to show and not tell. I don't know when this became a special thing in movie-making, but it's definitely becoming more rare. Impactful storytelling has to happen in the setting, the people, the cinematography, the dialog. And this does all of that. This is not easy watching, but it is delivered perfectly.

Strongly recommended. A favorite.