Hawkeye is out tracking a mountain lion as part of his role as a wildlife and fisheries officer. He stretches his range by showing he is good with a gun as well as a bow when he shoots a coyote in a scene a bit too real for my liking. Hope they at least ate the body afterwards. Instead of his quarry he finds the body of a young woman, six miles from anywhere, in her bare feet.
The local tribal police call in the FBI and get Olsen for their troubles. She was the nearest officer and has to be kitted out in some 80’s ski wear that once belonged to Hawkeye’s daughter before she can visit the murder scene. We learn that he married a native American woman and had a son and daughter, but the marriage fell apart when the daughter died in unsolved circumstances three years earlier,
What follows is a bit of ‘Witness’ style ‘fish out of water’ detective work as Olsen, with Haweye’s help, tries to solve the crime whilst avoiding putting her foot in a big cultural pat. They run down some junkies and, after shooting one, get a clue. Ultimately all the clues are tracks in the snow, so just keep looking down and you’ll do fine.
Issues with the death certificate mean that Olsen can’t call in all the Feds she’d like, so she has to make do with the tribal police and her own instincts. All trails point to the local oil drilling settlement and with a gruesome flashback and plenty of gun play the truth will out. Can we have some healing too please?
This was a superior offering that was well worth it’s high IMDb rating of 7.8. To be honest it had passed me by on release as it does look a bit bleak from the outset. It is ‘inspired by true events’ and the closing caption says loads of native American girls are raped and murdered but no totals are kept. You can see that the film was therefore motivated by an agenda, but it was a worthy one and it was wrapped in an exciting and thoughtful blanket of thrills.
The detection was OK, but when the body was found two options were given for the victim’s starting point and it turned out it was one of them. The oil drillers were a mental bunch and their behaviour did seem a bit ridiculous both in the flashback and in the showdown scenes. One says the snow and silence drove him mad but that didn’t explain their collective mentalness and a shootout that made the OK Corral look like water pistols at dawn.
Hawkeye was a familiar character as the broken man looking for redemption, but he gave good value. Olsen was a poor version of Jodie Foster as seen in ‘The Silence of the Lambs’ as the rookie FBI officer, but she was prepared to get down and dirty with no make up and a series of unflattering outfits and I was grateful to her for that.
The massive body count and brutal fights mean this isn’t one for the squeamish but it was fast paced and exciting and the locations were fantastic. It did seem unsatisfying that Hawkeye’s daughter’s death wasn’t explored in more detail but I guess a resolution to that may have seemed a bit too neat to be believable. Maybe for the sequel.
Best Bit : Wyoming Standoff ‘W’ Rating : 20/23
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