Winter's Bone

 

Winter’s Bone 2010

• Director: Debra Granik
• Based on the book by Daniel Woodrell
• Cast: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Garrett Dillahunt
• Personal “oh yeah him/her” reaction, i.e. have seen this actor in:
• Jennifer Lawrence – The Hunger Games, X Men, Passengers, Joy, American Hustle, Silver Lining Playbooks, Like Crazy
• John Hawkes – The Peter Butter Falcon, Three Billboards outside Ebbing Missouri, Everest, Contagion, Lost, The Miracle at St Ana, Miami Vice, Taken, The Perfect Storm, A Slipping Down Life, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
• Garrett Dillahunt – Where the Crawdads Sing, Widows, 12 Years a Slave, Any Day Now, The Road, Terminator the Sarah Connor Chronicles, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, No Country for Old Men
• Why? A good film.
• Seen: Once before. Now 21 January 2024

        Ree (Lawrence) takes care of her little brother and sister and their catatonic mother in a ramshackle house in the Ozarks. They have no money and little food. When the sheriff (Dillahint) tells her that her father has signed over the house and property as bail when he was arrested for making meth and now he’s missing and they’ll lose everything if he doesn’t show up for the trial, Ree starts looking for him. Her aggressive uncle Teardrop (Hawkes) warns her to stay out of it, as do all the neighbours. It starts getting ugly and violent.

       Utterly depressing.

       Lawrence, in her first major role, shines as the grim, determined kid who never quits. No wonder she got to play Catniss.

       It’s a very good and well-done film with good acting, but I find it so heavy and dismal, despite the somewhat happy ending, and the people are so mean-spirited – they no doubt support Trump – that I just can’t give it the rating it deserves.    

3* of 5