- Debra Granik's Winter's Bone gets every detail right. Ramshackle homes overflowing with flea market trinkets. Stacks of tires and scrap metal that blight an otherwise lovely wooded landscape. Four-wheelers, pickups, and even a rusted-out, blue GMC truck. Sheriffs that are likely to be outgunned by citizens. Families that have trampolines, dogs, and horses but either can't afford or just don't always bother to feed their kids. It's rural Missouri, poor as hell and twice as rough.
- Our tour guide through this particular corner of the Ozarks is a hardened young woman named Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence). If you're fond of understatement, you might say that Ree was dealt a bad hand in life. Her semi-catatonic mother can't take care of the other kids, so Ree handles all the cooking and cleaning, such as it is. Her missing father Jessup, a known meth cooker, has to show at his upcoming trial or the family house and lands get repossessed. Her uncle Teardrop (John Hawkes) seems like he could be in a position to help locate Jessup, but the man is just a little too wild and scary to be completely trusted. Looks like Ree will have to go it alone, but we gather there's nothing unusual about that.
- Proceeding like the rural version of an old-fashioned gumshoe, Ree canvasses the area looking for anyone who might know where her father's hiding out. Maybe he's hanging around with a drugrunner named Little Arthur (Kevin Breznahan)? Maybe he was killed in that old meth fire? A childhood friend (Lauren Sweetser) of Ree's wants to help, but can't. Neighbors and relatives bring food by and offer to adopt Ree's siblings, but nobody wants to say a word about Jessup. Finally, Ree ends up at the doorstep of a local kingpin named Thump Milton (Ron 'Stray Dog' Hall), where Thump's shrewish wife (Dale Dickey) does everything she can to get rid of Ree. What they don't realize is that pushing Ree away only increases her resolve.
- The plot of Winter's Bone, as disturbing and brutal as it is, did not affect me nearly as much as the experience of seeing Southwestern Missouri put on film. And I'm not just talking about the scenery, either. When Ree, played completely convincingly by Lawrence, gives her young siblings lessons in shooting a rifle or cleaning a squirrel, she's going over some very familiar ground indeed. Moreover, the film perfectly captures the ethos of this weird mini-civilization that scrabbles a living off the land, still relies on the barter system, and never, ever breaks the unspoken codes of honor. Thankfully, I've never personally encountered that part of rural Missouri that also involves murder and meth labs, but when the rest of the film is so accurate...
- The film was shot on location near Forsyth, MO, and was based on the novel by Daniel Woodrell.
- It would be remiss of me not to mention the small part played by Sheryl Lee, who played Laura Palmer on Twin Peaks.
