Steve Pond

For its combination of ambition and audacity, this is a glorious piece of cinematic insanity.

The beats are too predictable — and even though the film tells a story we may not have known until now, the storytelling is too familiar.

On the surface a tense investigative piece with Renner as a regular Sherlock of the snow, it also slips in cogent and damning points about the limitations and dead ends virtually forced on many residents of Native American reservations.

Its powerful moments are too often swamped by melodrama that undercuts the director’s skills as a storyteller.

It escalates past the point of absurdity, but all you can do as an audience member is shake your head and laugh.

This is a gentle, genial update, consistently amusing and always likable; it may not break new ground, but it finds enough of new jokes, and Morgan’s obvious love of language gives it an extra charge.

Spicer has a deft touch with his story, and his cast marvelously fleshes out a bunch of people we care about even though, in most cases, we know we probably shouldn’t.

It’s a strange, sad, fragile little thing that should make us snicker, but instead it fills the screen with grace and beauty.

From “Body Heat” to “Fargo,” women have driven the action in noir films before — but the way this one plays out, with AARP-age women holding all the cards in a setting we usually associate with rugged men, feels like a genuinely fresh take on a time-honored genre. And the ending, all cagey glances and serene indifference hiding some seriously twisted stuff, is downright delicious.