Two Avengers Teamed Up For This Gritty Free Streaming Drama
Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen starred in 2017's Wind River, a gritty crime drama about missing women on a Native Ameican Reservation, now streaming for free on Tubi.
The MCU has become so large that finding someone not connected to the blockbuster franchise is hard. From The Prestige (Christian Bale and Scarlet Johanson) to Us (Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke), Creed 3 (Michael B. Jordan, Jonathan Majors, and Tessa Thompson) to Black Swan (Sebastian Stan and Natalie Portman), what was once fun trivia now happens every other month. One of the best of these pairings, Wind River is now streaming on Tubi, letting fans watch Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen’s underrated neo-western crime drama for free, with ads.
The film is the second time the pair worked together following Captain America: Civil War, which saw them on the same side of the ideological conflict between Captain America (Chris Evans) and Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.). Instead of playing the best member of the Avengers and the all-powerful Scarlet Witch, Wind River is a grounded film with the pair playing a wilderness tracker and FBI Agent, respectively. With a plot centered around the rape and murder of a young woman from a Native American Reservation, the film is a dramatic change of pace.
Intended to raise awareness about the plight of missing Native American women, Wind River is filled with the twists and turns to be expected from a modern western crime film. Cory Lambert (Jeremy Renner) and Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) stumble across a growing conspiracy, with one dead body becoming three, and while there’s a connection between them, no one’s talking.
Alongside the two Avengers are Graham Greene, Kelsey Asbille, Gil Birmingham, Julia Jones, Martin Sensmeier, and Jon Bernthal, another MCU actor. Behind the camera, the film was written and directed by Taylor Sheridan, now best known for creating Yellowstone.
A hit when it first premiered in theaters, the film made $45 million against a budget of only $11 million. Critics liked the film as well, as it currently is listed on Rotten Tomatoes as 88 percent fresh with an audience rating of 90 percent. Jeremy Renner and Elizabeth Olsen both were praised for their performances, while Sheridan was hailed as a rising star director.
Wind River did so well that a sequel is now in development, without Jeremy Renner or Elizabeth Olsen, starring Jason Clarke, Scott Eastwood, and Chaske Spencer. The biggest controversy about the first film will likely be fixed with the second, as Sheridan cast non-Native American actors in Native American roles, drawing fire from multiple groups. Native journalists disliked the use of the “dying native” trope, but ultimately appreciated what the film set out to do and in recent years, have turned to support Sheridan for his nuanced portrayals in Yellowstone.
We don’t know the next time Jeremy Renner will get to star in a major feature film following his snow plow accident a few months ago. For now, the actor is recovering while still managing to promote his latest series, The Mayor of Kingstown, and an upcoming reality show, Rennervations. Elizabeth Olsen will next star in Love & Death, an HBO true crime series about real-life murderer Candy Montgomery.
Wind River can be watched right now on Tubi.
