Wind River: Revisiting the ending of Taylor Sheridan's 2017 crime thriller

Wind River is a film in the neo-western crime genre written and helmed by Taylor Sheridan. The film is produced by Peter Berg, Matthew George, Elizabeth A. Bell, Basil Iwanyk, and Wayne L. Rogers. It had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival, and it was released theatrically on August 4, 2017, by The Weinstein Company, but the film's distribution for home media was later acquired by Lionsgate.

Here is the official synopsis of the film as per Letterboxd:

"An FBI agent teams with the town’s veteran game tracker to investigate a murder that occurred on a Native American reservation."

Let us take a look at how this crime thriller ended.

What is the plot of Wind River?

Wind River follows an FBI agent named Jane Banner (played by Elizabeth Olsen) who teams up with a U.S. Wildlife Agent, Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner). The two are looking into the murder of a Native American woman inside a reservation.

How does Wind River end?

Towards the end of Wind River, Lambert and Banner find the corpse of Natalie's boyfriend Matt (Jon Bernthal). He used to work as a security guard at a drilling site. All the cops rule out his involvement in Natalie's murder. During the investigation, they meet with Matt's friends, and one of them is Pete Mickens. Their argument soon turns into a major standoff.

During the shootout, a flashback reveals what had happened to Natalie. One night, she had a fight with Matt, and subsequently, she moved to his trailer. Pete, along with his friends, barges into the trailer. Since all of them are drunk, they r*pe Natalie and kill Matt. Natalie manages to escape but freezes to death in the open.

Matt's boss, Curtis, gets into a gunfight with Jane, Lambert, and Ben Shoyo. Most of them are killed, but Lambert and Jane are saved. Lambert goes after Pete, who decides to escape. Lambert forces him into a situation like Natalie's. Pete eventually dies. Towards the very end, Lambert meets Martin as they grieve over the death of their daughters.

The film ends with a title card that mentions there is no missing person statistic for Native American women. It is the only demographic not to have such a statistic. Reservation sites, as mentioned in the film, are one of the most vulnerable places for women with little to no police presence.

In an interview with NPR, Taylor Sheridan said that the film is based on several real-life incidents.

"It's based on thousands of actual stories just like it."

He explained,

"This issue with s*xual assault against women on the reservation - I mean, it's existed since the inception of a reservation system. But, really, in the past 15, 20 years, it's exploded. And it gets no attention, which is the motivation for writing the film."

Sheridan also said that he included the title card in the end to help people understand the magnitude of the issue since they could not find any statistics.

Wind River is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.