North Country Review

North Country

What's a sweetheart like you doin' in a dump like this?

Minnesota’s poet laureate Bob Dylan asks this question as the end credits for North Country role. The answer, as far as the women laborers of northern range iron mines is, "The same thing as an asshole like you."

Charlize Theron’s mastery of her role in Monster (2003) led directly to her landing the role of the determined iron-worker Josey Aimes, and the casting is picture perfect. Theron leads a strong cast of screen veterans such as Woody Harrelson and Sissy Spacek, while drawing fine performances from newcomers Thomas Curtis, who plays her adrift son, and Michelle Monighan, a charming co-worker.

In order to deal in this game, got to make the queen disappear.

Playing a role either Cher or Glenn Close would have been given fifteen years ago, Theron succeeds in making a downtrodden single mother seem new rather than a reprise. Josey doesn't act surprised by the abuse she encounters at the mines, she is surprised. She is surprised, hurt, and terrified by uncivilized men in an uncensored environment. Acting is exactly what we aren't aware of. Theron has embodied her role so perfectly that the drama unfolds with no visible effort.

You can be known as the most beautiful woman who ever crawled across cut glass to make a deal.

The climax of this film is not in the courtroom or even in a moving Union Hall scene. The true victory comes between Josey and her teen son Sammy, played expertly by 14 y/o Thomas Curtis. Sammy teeters on the brink of an abyss because he hasn't really had any parenting. Josey is his mother, but she only becomes an adult through the events in the movie. Is it too late to salvage Sammy's fragmented, ugly image of himself? Maybe, but Josey is determined to fight for him, though dark secrets from the past haunt them both. Kudos to Curtis for shedding all remnants of boyish cuteness.

Steal a little and they throw you in jail, steal a lot and they make you king.

North Country is a lesson in drawing lines and choosing sides. As Jodi Foster's The Accused proved, even the witnesses are culpable when a crime is committed. Such crimes as those committed in North Country indict not just an individual or a corporation, but also a society, and there is never a bad time to examine ourselves. Movies this powerful come along once a decade. Grade A

-By MW (Lyrics by Bob Dylan)

North Country

Opening 10/21

Cast: Charlize Theron, Frances McDormand, Woody Harrelson, Thomas Curtis

Director: Niki Caro

MPAA Rating: R for sequences involving sexual harassment including violence and dialogue, and for language.

Runtime: 126 minutes

Release Company: Warner Brothers