Winter's Bone

As the film opens, up in the Ozarks, we have a family with a problem. Ree, a seventeen year old girl, has two younger siblings, a brother and a sister, a mentally ill mother, and a ne'er-do-well father who's currently missing. Worse, her father is out on bail and due to appear in court, and has put the house up as collateral to the bail bondsman. Hence, if her father doesn't turn up, and appear at his trial, the family is out on the street. And it doesn't look like he's turning up, so Ree has to go and find him.

And there her troubles increase, because there is a code up in the Ozarks, and that means you don't tell anybody anything; hence nobody's going to tell her anything about her daddy, and think that her proposing to turn her daddy into the cops is beyond the pale. But despite all the dire warnings, she hasn't got a choice, so she keeps digging, and eventually finds that there might be more to her dad's disappearance than the simple fact that he's a deadbeat.

It's interesting, I think, that your perspective on the clan of petty criminals she's investigating depends so much on the nature of the investigator. I couldn't help thinking that if this were a cop film, like (for instance), a Dirty Harry film, then these guys would be barely worth the toe of Clint Eastwood's boot. These are the kind of minor criminals your average movie detective kicks, beats and threatens on his way to more serious game. But we haven't got the services of Det. Harry Callaghan here, it's one young girl, on her own, which makes these guys a whole different kind of scary. Like almost Wes Craven Movie scary.

And that's what's so great about this film. Ree isn't tough, dangerous, well armed, has no back up, and that's what makes her so heroic. No-one would blame her for giving up, and running away; she's in serious danger, and a kind of danger she's not equipped to handle. And so we see a kind of bravery that's not generally seen in detective films.

Overall, it's a really great, great looking film that has the power to make you feel physically sick with worry for the protagonist at times.