Guns of Wind River

Jeremy Renner is starring in what looks to be a solid gun movie that doesn’t involve aliens, superheroes, or layers upon layers of CGI. Not only that, but it looks like the flick actually contains good, valuable gun safety knowledge.

The specially released clip above shows Cory Lambert (Renner) picking up his son Casey (Teo Briones) at his mother Wilma’s (Julie Jones) house.

When Casey comes down the stairs, eager to set off with his dad, he has his BB gun under one arm with the muzzle facing forward and a bag in his hands.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa,” Cory says, halting his son on the stairs. “What’s your BB gun pointed at right now?”

The boy immediately drops his bag and grabs the BB gun with both hands and makes sure the BB gun muzzle is pointed at the ceiling.

“Hey, what’s the rule, bud? Ok, gun’s always loaded, even if it ain’t. Right?”

“Yes.”

The movie looks to be a tense thriller about an FBI agent, Janet Banner (Elizabeth Olsen), who teams up with Cory, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service agent, to solve a murder o the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.

Cory discovers a body in the wilderness on the reservation, after which the FBI sends Banner, a young agent who is not prepared for the local environment and the brutal Wyoming winter and employs Cory as a tracker.

As for the guns, we only get a few flashes.

First, when Cory discovers the body, he looks to be toting a bolt action rifle with a white stock in a carrier on his backpack with a ported muzzle brake, though we never get a good look at the action, so it's tough to identify, but we do see that it has a fluted barrel when he's shooting at coyotes.

Later, we see Cory uncase a modern lever-action rifle that looks an awful lot like the Marlin Model 1895SBL lever-action rifle with a stainless finish and ag ray laminated wood stock carried by Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) in Jurassic World (2015) with an oversized lever loop. It even looks to have the same Leopold Optics FX-II Scout IER 2.5x28mm scope with a stainless finish, though it's hard to see if there's a yellow line on the front bell or not in the Wind River trailer.

The scope is mounted with black rings, just like the Jurassic World gun, but Cory's look to be mounted a bit farther forward, almost like a scout rifle.

Since Renner is a lefty, as evidenced by his bow shooting in the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies as Hawkeye, the rifle is set up for a left-handed shooter, as evidenced by the orientation of the ammo carrier on the buttstock.

We do get a shot of an elastic ammo sleeve on the stock of Cory's rifle, and the shells look a bit too long to be .45-70 Government rounds, for which the Marlin is chambered, but more like .30-30 rounds, though this could just be because of the sleeve and the shape of the bullets.

We also get a shot of Cory at his reloading bench and some close-ups of the ammo he's making, but unfortunately, it's a little too close and we never see the whole cartridges, so it's tough to tell.

We also see Banner use her sidearm, which looks to be a Glock 19, one of the pistols currently issued by the FBI. From the shot of the grip while the gun is in her holster, it looks to be a Gen4 Glock with finger grooves.

Hopefully, the movie lives up to its trailer. Wind River is in select theaters now and should hit On-Demand services before the fall.

UPDATE: 11/30/17

Well, Wind River didn't do very well at the box office with only a limited theatrical release, but once it got to disc and on demand services, it proved to be a fantastic film with some wonderful editing and action.

To correct our earlier judgement, it seems Agent Jane Banner (Elizabeth Olsen) actually carries a full sized Glock 17 pistol, not a G19.

Corey also looks to carry a Ruger Blackhawk single-action revolver in a western leather gun belt and holster, though he only draws it once right before he finds Natalie's body while tracking a mountain lion.

Additionally, we see some of the drilling site security workers carrying what look to be a mixture of Glocks and S&W M&P handguns, along with a Mossberg 590 Mariner shotgun and a Benelli M4 as well as one full-auto Heckler & Koch HK416 D10RS fitted with an EOTech sight.

Other than the very Hollywood "knock-down" power of the .45-70 Marlin rifle, the depiction of firearms and tactics in this movie are extremely realistic. The violence has a wonderful sloppy quality that makes it feel more real and less choreographed than most movies and it's definitely worth a watch.