If you’re looking for a good crime/mystery this is your ticket. From Writer & Director, Taylor Sheridan (Hell or High Water) and inspired by actual events, this is Wyoming…God’s country. Poetry in motion – trees, sheep, home on the range – it’s the kind of air that freezes your nose hairs from a mere intake; and the kind of cold that kills Natalie (Kelsey Asbille) a young Native American on the run.
Cory Lambert (Jeremey Renner) is the Fish and Wildlife Ranger, when he comes across the body. Escorted by FBI Agent, Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) the two try to backpedal the snow prints to justice. Of course a pending storm doesn’t help as the snow tracks will soon be concealed. Working feverishly, the two unravel the truth…
And the truth is that Natalie didn’t die from a pulmonary hemorrhage in her frigid-air-filled-lungs, but was murdered. This is a film is about more than a dead body frozen in the mountains. It’s about Energy Companies (though we never quite learn enough about West Central Fuel.) It’s about the repercussions of the Native American reservations.
Graham Greene plays the father of the victim. You’ll recognize him from Dances with Wolves. He’s tired of fighting this life of white vs. red skin.
A film to be reckoned with… this is Jeremey Renner’s movie. For the first time he plays a grownup. A father grieving by his own rite. (spoiler alert). An actor to be admired.
The movie features a poem that begins, “There’s a meadow in my perfect world…” and we imagine that the Indians long for peace in that meadow.
Bravo to filmmaker Taylor Sheridan for shining light on an issue that tells us as a nation, there is still little justice. The MIA statistics on Native American women does not exist. Or in other words…the ‘Trail of Tears’ is still far from over. 3 ½ tiaras