North Country

At the very start of this movie, I thought it might actually replace Crash as my favorite movie of the year. The opening scenes were spectaculary beautiful, and I knew the the story ahead had the potential of being extremely powerful and gripping. But in the end it was not to be. The movie was good, but it didn't have that extra edge to make it truly great.

North Country is the story of a young woman (Josey Aimes played by Charlize Theron) and her fight against sexual harrassment in the coal mines of Minnesota. What absolutely floored me was that the movie is based on a true story which took place hardly more than a decade ago, (1989). It is hard to imagine such open and pervasive harrassment still existing such a short time ago. It is interesting also that the suit filed was the first class action lawsuit for sexual harassment in American history.

The movie had a good cast including Charlize Theron (Monster) as Josey Aimes, Frances McDormand (Fargo), as Glory, a friend of Josey who talks her into applying for a job at the mines, Woody Harrelson, as a local hero and lawyer who agrees to take Josey's case, Richard Jenkins as Josey's father and Sissy Spacek as Josey's mother. The acting was excellent, but the characters they played just weren't given enough depth to really show off the cast's talents.

In the same way, a story that had the potential of being very powerful and gripping turned out to be mostly flat. There were some scenes towards the end that were powerful enough to get me chocked up, but for the most part the story was predictable, and too one dimensional to really draw me into it.

In summary, this was a good movie that had the potential to be great but didn't achieve it. The story is interesting from a historical perspective, and the great cast make it enjoyable. Also the cinemetography is at times stunning, making the movie well worth seeing in a theatre. Even though the movie didn't achieve the greatness I thought it would, it was still good enough to recommend.