The dilapidated American shanty towns of the Ozarks region provide the setting for this excellent, award-winning thriller. Jennifer Lawrence (so good in 2008's The Burning Plain) gives a superb performance in her first starring role as Ree Dolly, an older-than-her-years teenager who is forced to take charge of her flaky mother and much younger siblings when her drug-dealing father jumps bail and goes on the run. As he had put the family home up as collateral for his bail, Bree makes it her mission to find him before they are evicted. However, she uncovers a local conspiracy of silence and finds that blood ties mean nothing in an area swamped with poverty, where the only industry is the production of the lethal illegal high, crystal meth. The film never flinches from the ugliness of its details - Bree guts and cooks squirrel for her starving family - but Lawrence's mature and inspiring determination makes this much, much more than a grim skid-row whodunnit.

After discovering her father put their house up for his bail bond and then disappeared, 17-year-old Ree Dolly must confront the local criminal underworld and the harsh Ozark wilderness in order to to track down her father and save her family.