Summary:
An impoverished, recently widowed mother of two gets sucked into the world of crime that dwells right outside her door, and must fight to protect her children.
My Thoughts:
“A Good Woman is Hard to Find” would feel remarkably at home in a collection of slow-burn exploitation films from the late 60s (like “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”), 70s (“Death Wish”), or 80s (“Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer”). The subject matter is dark, gritty, and gross, and the outlook on life is even more so. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that cheap, sleazy, and disgusting exploitation films are a dime a dozen (check your local video store’s dollar bin), but great exploitation films ask the viewer to look past the layers of grit and blood to find meaning in the misery (while also gleaming a bit of entertainment), and this film wholly succeeds in doing just that. “A Good Woman is Hard to Find” is original, visceral, emotional, and totally badass. “A Good Woman is Hard to Find” is one of those great exploitation movies we keep an eye out for, and it might just be a new classic of the genre.
“I don’t want any part of this.”
Sarah (Sarah Bolger, “In America”) is an impoverished, recently widowed mother of two children, Ben (Rudy Doherty) and Lucy (Macie McCauley). Sarah’s husband was murdered, and her son was witness to the crime and has now gone inexplicably mute due to the trauma; the crime has also gone unsolved. Sarah’s mother (Jane Brennan, “Brooklyn”) tries to help as best she can, but she constantly makes references to the fact that things would be easier if Sarah would just move in with her, instead of trying to make it on her own. One night, a man named Tito (Andrew Simpson, “The Survivalist”) breaks into Sarah’s house after stealing a bag full of drugs from renowned drug kingpin Leo Miller’s (Edward Hogg, “Kill Your Friends”) lackeys, and threatens to hurt Sarah and her children if she does not help him store the drugs until he can sell them. With no other choice, Sarah reluctantly bows to his wishes, but things quickly get out of hand.
So, the funny thing is I found this film on a list of ‘Best Horror Movies to Look Forward to in 2020”. While I wouldn’t exactly label this film a horror film, there are a ton of horrific elements, so I can understand why someone would label it that way. There are a few scenes that are incredibly gory, and most of this film is wrought with more tension than you’d find in run-of-the-mill horror flicks, still, I feel as if the setting, execution, and ending in this film are far more thriller-esque than they are horror-y. I suppose what I’m trying to say is this movie becomes sort of a blend of the two genres, while also staying surprisingly relatively grounded with it’s dramatic elements, so that makes the film as a whole transcend itself.
I think one of the reasons this film works so well is because it eases you slowly into the more terrifying parts of the world. When Sarah starts out, she’s in a poor neighborhood where it’s obvious crime has eaten away at the community, even to the point where that crime has affected her life (her husband being murdered). But, when we also start the film, Sarah is at a point where she has distanced herself enough to just ignore whatever it was that was happening: she could ignore the violence outside so long as she and her children are safe. When that safety is threatened, when Tito breaks in and demands to store drugs in her house, her perspective shifts; she is no longer able to just try to keep her head down and keep her distance- she’s been dragged, kicking and screaming, into this world she’d tried so hard to avoid.
However, it’s then that the film really gets interesting; Tito offers Sarah a little bit of the cut from the drugs he sells, and though Sarah refuses, Tito eventually forces her to take it, so in a sense, she has become a party to selling the drugs. Her life benefits from this extra money a little bit: she’s able to buy more food for her kids, even a bottle of wine for herself. But, because she has aligned herself with Tito now, she knows that when things go south- and they do go south- she wont be able to go to the police; she’ll have to handle things herself.
(SPOILERS FOLLOW)
It’s this slow easing into the criminal world that sets the stage, building up our characters and the rules of the world, but then about halfway through the film takes a violent, albeit unavoidable turn, and everything changes. Ben finds the drugs and gets into them, spreading the powder out all over the floor and essentially ruining the stash. When Tito finds out, he becomes violent, tries to rape her, and Sarah stabs and kills him, and is forced to dismember the body. Leo Miller, the man who Tito robbed, is still looking for the missing drugs and wants justice for what happened, and soon he finds Sarah’s tenuous relation to Tito and seeks to exploit her.
Honestly, my only problems with this film were the few very coincidental moments, some of which I wont give away because they spoil some rather important plot points. But an example of one of those coincidental moments comes when Leo Miller’s lackeys are looking for Tito, they cant find him, and they pass Sarah and her kids in a grocery store; Lucy, for whatever reason, keeps saying Tito’s name, and the lackeys take that as reason to believe that Tito and Sarah know each other. That’s a pretty far reach in my opinion, but I was willing to overlook a few of the sillier connections because the rest of the execution was just so good.
Verdict:
This is an incredibly solid exploitative thriller, and I absolutely recommend seeing it if you get a chance.
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