“Luck don’t live out here,” utters Cory Lambert, played by Jeremy Renner, in Taylor Sheridan’s shatteringly real depiction of uncounted femicides that have plagued, and still plague, Native American Indian reservations in Wind River. This single line encapsulates the soul of Sheridan’s Western narratives, revealing an underbelly not glossed by heroics and irresponsibly shimmering white saviors (though most of the protagonists are white males). Being a white male himself, Sheridan writes what he knows as an advocate for the cause he is illuminating, reinforced by thorough research and personal relationships with those he’s writing about. His approach is incredibly self-aware, successfully escaping, and deliberately countering the racist misogyny riddling the works of John Ford and John Wayne.
Sheridan’s mastery lies within his depictions of modern humanity. Separating himself from his predecessors, the writer/director excels at discussing current social struggles, not those existing 100 years ago. Let’s look at four feature films of Sheridan’s, Sicario, Hell or High Water, Wind River, and Those Who Wish Me Dead, that successfully tackle issues befalling the United States today, issues often existing on the fray of discussion and news coverage.
Sicario: Cruelty of Cartels Within the States
Black Label Media
Launching his career, Sheridan wrote the brutally engaging Sicario, discussing the ever-present issue of cartel activity surrounding the Mexican border with the United States. Sheridan depicts the unforgiving brutality that agents and law enforcement alike meet when confronting this issue, but the truest wisdom lies in showing that those facing the brunt of this brutality are indeed individuals from South America, and Mexico specifically, trying to escape this violence. The opening scene of Sicario considerately avoids the focus of this film to be immigration, and refocuses attention on violence that plagues the southern population of our continent.
Following idealistic FBI agent Kate Macer, played by Emily Blunt, the audience is shepherded through the narrative, mirroring her quickly depleting hope as they engage with the cartels within Mexico. The first major red flag arises when Kate is virtually forced to engage in an operation across the border, violating their operation’s legal status, while also recruiting the shadowy cut-throat hitman Alejandor, played by Benicio Del Toro. Kate is met at every corner with “off-book” practices, sexism, unforgiving brutality, and shifty black-ops discrepancies in chain of command, leaving little room to lean on protocol or what she trusts will keep her safe in this tempest of murder and deceit. Sicario walked away with three Academy Award nominations for cinematography, original score, and sound editing, and inspired a sequel Sicario: Day of Soldado, as well as Sicario 3 in development.
Hell or High Water: Extortion of Impoverished Americans
Lionsgate
In the immediate wake of Sicario’s success, Sheridan wrote Hell or High Water, wrangling his first Academy nomination for Best Original Screenplay. The film follows the desperate tale of the Howard brothers, played by the heartbreaking duo Chris Pine and Ben Foster, robbing banks to pay off a predatory homeowners loan for their mother’s house in the deserts of West Texas. Their inevitable pursuers, Texas Rangers played by the warm, yet harshly bigoted Jeff Daniels and partner Gil Birmignham, slowly close in on the Howard brothers as their actions start leaning towards erratic and violent.
The narrative’s profundity emerges as more and more reasons lead the audience to consider that perhaps these antiheroes, Pine and Foster, are actually in the right. Sheridan depicts a rarely seen version of U.S. citizens struggling to survive, acting as prey for banks and Big Oil, living in relative poverty, and being forced to take matters into their own hands. Hell or High Water continues to carve Sheridan’s notch in the belt of Western cinema with this impoverished West Texas heist thriller. He disguises his message within this archetype to discuss the issue of the rich few feeding off of the meager many, not in some far off developing nation, but within US borders. The narrative isn’t new, but revelatory in that the film’s present is also our own, exposing a huge portion of the population that is legitimately on its last leg.
Wind River: Uncounted Missing Indigenous Women
Acacia Entertainment
Wind River solidified Sheridan as a force with whom to be reckoned, culminating a trilogy of back to back masterworks, this time sitting in the director’s chair, delivering arguably his finest work to date. Wind River tackles a bold and risky issue to discuss through Sheridan’s eyes, and while not an Oscar-magnet, earned Sheridan the Un Certain Regard Award for Best Director at Cannes. The story follows expert tracker Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) who discovers the body of a young Indigenous girl in the desolate Wyoming snows in the Wind River Indian Reservation, home to the Eastern Shoshone (also referred to as Sosori) as well as the Northern Arapaho Tribe. Lambert’s discovery initiates an FBI investigation revealing the many jurisdictional pitfalls and maze of red-tape existing within the United States Department of Justice interactions with the Indigenous reservations. Ushered through the investigation by the indisputable talents of Elizabeth Olsen, Graham Greene, and Tantoo Cardinal, the heartbreaking realities existing on reservations are brought to light. At every beat, Wind River exposes the well deserved distrust that reservation inhabitants have for federal law enforcement, a perpetuation of a tragic impasse in times of legal disparity that exists between inhabitants, and frankly, everyone else.
According to the National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center, Wind River successfully “humanizes missing and murdered Indigenous women and the challenges of protecting and seeking justice for them.” The film’s final sequence, on the heels of a devastating series of climactic scenes, features Lambert consoling the father of the found girl, ending with two crushing lines of text: “While missing persons statistic are compiled for every other demographic, none exist for Native American women”.
Those Who Wish Me Dead: Montana Smokejumpers
New Line Cinema
Sheridan, distracted by creating three successful series, Yellowstone, 1883, and 1923, dipping toes in the historic frontier, took a hiatus from features, then re-emerged in theaters with the Montana-based thriller Those Who Wish Me Dead. Though the film’s urgency isn’t as palpable as Sheridan’s previous works, it does depict one of the greatest forces existing in our modern west: wildfires. Though the narrative lacks certain mastery, the moments depicting the spread of the fire as living, breathing, demonic hell-flames roaring through the helpless Montana wilderness is nothing short of terrifying, and with respect to recent tragedies befalling the western states of the United States, potentially triggering.
Sheridan continues to create poignant stories amid the ruthless western frontier, most notably with his Paramount+ series Yellowstone, premiering its fifth season November 13, 2022. Not to mention, churning out a prequel to Yellowstone with 1883, as well as the highly anticipated series 1923, bridging the two series previous, and featuring the jaw-dropping lead talents of Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren. Sheridan is revolutionizing his genre, adhering to historical tropes by displaying the awe-striking landscapes of the American West, while responsibly depicting the natural and human forces that make the American West, indeed, wild.
