A western with wit

FILM

Rough at the edges
It’s not often that Hollywood screenwriters get as much attention as directors. But Taylor Sheridan became a brand of sorts after he scripted “Sicario” and “Hell or High Water”. With just two films, he established himself as a master of the contemporary western: at home in America’s wildest territories and writing the kind of swaggering dialogue actors rarely get the chance to deliver. Wind River is the first film he has directed as well as written and his stamp is all over it. Inspired by a true story, it’s a soulful, socially conscious detective yarn set in and around a snowbound Native American reservation in Wyoming. When a young woman’s body is found, miles from anywhere, a rookie FBI agent (Elizabeth Olsen) is flown in to investigate. But the film’s real hero is a rugged local hunter (Jeremy Renner, above left) whose words are as well-aimed as his bullets. “Luck don’t live out here,” he says, with Sheridan’s typical concision. “Luck lives in the city.”