It’s easy for moments of desperation to enable small mistakes or oversights that can have far more dramatic implications down the road. People often take jobs that seem either undesirable or unpleasant when they’re in need of money, convinced that eventually they’ll make enough to reach a point where they’ll no longer have to worry and can turn to something else. But it may be too late at that point, and getting out can be more difficult than getting in was in the first place. Little Lorraine examines a piece of relatively recent Canadian history and the more universal instinct of doing whatever it takes to survive.
In 1986 in Little Lorraine, Nova Scotia, a coal mining fire worsens an already poor situation, putting many in the small town out of work. Among them is Jimmy (Stephen Amell), who is struggling to support his family and who receives an unexpected opportunity when his uncle Huey (Stephen McHattie) shows up extending an olive branch and a job, inviting Jimmy and his friends to work on his lobster boat. As they get to know the ropes, they soon learn that Huey is involved in much more than just fishing, smuggling cocaine and other drugs on his boat and dead set on ensuring that his new collaborators don’t do anything to disrupt his business or implicate him or anyone else.
Little Lorraine is the kind of story that moves with its characters, opening with a tragedy that devastates a place that can’t really take another loss. Jimmy is emblematic of the rest of the town, used to hard work but also short on options, and it’s because he wants to care for his family that he opts to be in the company of someone who historically has not been a great influence, looking the other way at potential red flags to see the hope in the opportunity. That blind hope makes it possible for things to quickly get out of control, but this film unfurls its developments in a gradual and unsettling way that, even if audiences know they’re coming, still have the potential to catch them by surprise.
Inspired by Adam Baldwin’s song “Lighthouse in Litle Lorraine,” this film is the feature directorial debut of Andy Hines, best known for being behind the camera on music videos. The transition from one medium to another works well as Hines focuses on the atmosphere of Nova Scotia that helps to define this film and the people featured in it. Many scenes take place aboard the boat and feel as if they could have been shot in any body of water, yet there is a consistency to the film’s tone that keeps it all grounded and tethered to a community that is struggling and willing to go to great lengths to make sure that they don’t get washed away.
Amell will be familiar to most for his starring role in the CW series Arrow, and he offers an understated but committed lead turn as Jimmy. A handful of familiar faces can be found in the ensemble, including Sean Astin, Matt Walsh, and Rhys Darby, but the standout is indisputably McHattie, who inhabits a role that feels familiar – the bad influence relative who is fiercely loyal to family but also has a foreboding nature that hints at a deep dark side – and portrays him on par with Ben Mendelsohn’s Pope in Animal Kingdom. It’s terrifying to watch him, not knowing whether he’s genuinely smiling or plotting something nefarious, and that adds an intensity to this otherwise human story that serves as a tribute to this town’s population and the changing winds that swept through there and turned into transformative storms.
Movie Rating: 7/10
