Much as I enjoy Jeremy Renner in basically whatever he turns up in, what persuaded me to watch what looked to be a pretty grim movie judging by premise and notices was seeing that it was written (and directed) by Taylor Sheridan, who also did the screenplays for Sicario and Hell or High Water, both of which were excellent.
It's another contemporary American frontier - Wyoming this time, snowy even in spring and stalked by mountain lions and predators of the human kind as well as the living ghosts of the native American reservation where the action takes place. There's something nicely straightforward about Sheridan's approach to characters; he's not afraid to give them traits that could be trite (Renner's hunter is stoic and has suffered a loss of his own; Elizabeth Olsen's FBI agent is green and unfamiliar with the territory but tough), and the way they speak, often in complete sentences that verge on the declamatory, can risk feeling a touch stagey, but in the end it comes down to how they act - not just those two (both of whom are very persuasive presences throughout), but the several others who also play important parts - and that aspect is particularly satisfying. And the bursts of emotion and violence - often surprising, and with more impact as a result - find their mark. It all adds up to something quite good.
It's another contemporary American frontier - Wyoming this time, snowy even in spring and stalked by mountain lions and predators of the human kind as well as the living ghosts of the native American reservation where the action takes place. There's something nicely straightforward about Sheridan's approach to characters; he's not afraid to give them traits that could be trite (Renner's hunter is stoic and has suffered a loss of his own; Elizabeth Olsen's FBI agent is green and unfamiliar with the territory but tough), and the way they speak, often in complete sentences that verge on the declamatory, can risk feeling a touch stagey, but in the end it comes down to how they act - not just those two (both of whom are very persuasive presences throughout), but the several others who also play important parts - and that aspect is particularly satisfying. And the bursts of emotion and violence - often surprising, and with more impact as a result - find their mark. It all adds up to something quite good.
