This contemporary noir set in the bleak winter of the Ozarks is exactly the movie I didn't know I had been waiting for forever. Really though, Winter's Bone borrows very little from traditional noirs. I wouldn't necessarily call it a noir, but maybe a mythical, feminist, coming of age fable about duty and independence... with a noir bouquet. Morally ambiguous characters speak in hard-boiled cadences while treading the thin moral ground between mere survival and criminal activity. Though there are criminals, there are no true villains, just a basic moral code to be negotiated based on individual requirement. Everyone in this small community is just trying to get by through various methods, the most noticeable of which is meth production.
