“Winters Bone” review

“Winters Bone” is an independent film that has received a load of accolades in the past few months, including the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. It stars Jennifer Lawrence as Ree Dolly, a 17-year old girl who lives with and basically cares for her mentally ill mother and two younger siblings in Missouri’s Ozark mountains. One day, the town sheriff shows up and tells them that her meth-cooking father has posted their house for bail, and then disappeared. In order to keep her house, Ree must find her father within a week, and in her investigation both exposes a web of local corruption amongst her townsfolk, and realizes strength and will she never thought she had.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree, and gives one of the most compelling female performances in recent memory. Lawrence simply put, makes the film. She’s alternately fierce, terrified, battered and determined, and absolutely fascinating to watch. She elevates this film from mere thriller to fascinating coming-of-age-story. The production values are admittedly low (Do remember this film was made for $2 million) but it doesn’t detract from the film’s quality, and honestly you don’t notice the lack of polish. The dialogue is spot-on perfect, although once again, the film has such a natural flow that one doesn’t notice such things.

“Winters Bone” deserves every bit of praise that critics have been giving it. Not since “Frozen River” or perhaps “No Country for Old Men” have I seen such a tense, involving thriller. The thing that makes “Winters Bone” so tense and quietly terrifying is that the villains, or for that matter the characters, don’t feel like traditional “movie” characters, but real, genuine characters whose lives we are given a brief insight to. That’s the sheer genius of “Winters Bone”, in that as the film progresses, it slowly but unrelentingly grips us in ways few recent films have. A small-scale, but undeniable masterpiece.

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