★★★
This is a good little movie: tight acting, interesting story, good art direction, compelling suspense and lots of local color. I was more engaged by the art direction and cinematography than most else here. It’s winter in the Ozarks -- a poor part of the Ozarks—and everything from the sky to the interiors is dirty gray. The people here look as beat up as their houses and trucks, and the society we see is run by fierce families where men take care of men-things and women with long hair take care of women-things. The heroine, 17-year-old Ree, faces a forced move from poverty to abject poverty, and in trying to avoid this, she pushes her extended family until they react and take care of her problem.
Winter’s Bone is a grim, hard, suspense movie that finds its dark tension in a slice of America we don’t see on screen often: a poor, rural area beset by a drug problem. Becase it's so strongly rooted in its locale, the film can give us villians we're not used to and threatening situations we're not familiar with. This recasting of cliche elements alone could make the film worthwhile, but director Debra Granik makes almost no missteps creating her tight, engaging thrill. If not the stuff of classics, this film is definitely worth an evening.
