A Good Woman Is Hard To Find (2019)

Director Abner Pastoll didn't really impress me as much as he seemed to impress others with his 2015 feature, Road Games. It was a film with some decent moments, but dragged down by predictability and implausibility. It's hard to think that this tense thriller is directed by the same person who made that movie. A Good Woman Is Hard To Find is a near-perfect piece of work, and I HIGHLY recommend you check it out as soon as you can.

Sarah Bolger stars as Sarah, a young widow who is still trying to figure out just who killed her husband. Other people have their theories, and the police seem to have much more on their plate to deal with. It looks like she may never get any answers, although that changes when a young crook named Tito (Andrew Simpson) bursts into her home. He has stolen some drugs from some very bad men, and wants somewhere to hide out. Seeing Sarah, and her two young children, Tito realises it could be the perfect place to stash his goods, and he'll give her a cut of the money. But Sarah wants nothing to do with the situation. Leo Miller (played by Edward Hogg) is the local crime boss who sends his henchmen out to retrieve the drugs they lost, and it turns out that he MIGHT have something to do with the death of Sarah's husband.

Everyone is working at the top of their game here, and I suspect that they're responding positively to the script, by Ronan Blaney, and the effort made by Pastoll to craft something excruciatingly tense around a fantastic lead character. Sarah is shown, from the very start, to be someone who is trying her best under extremely difficult circumstances, and there's a strength visible there, even in her weakest and most fragile moments. If she seems too timid or passive, it's only to protect her children, or to be on her best behaviour in front of them.

Bolger is so good in the main role that I cannot find enough superlatives to throw around here. She's been working hard for many years now, and in a fair world this would be the role to take her career to some higher level. This isn't a fair world though, so I can only hope that the right people see her performance here, and are suitably blown away. Simpson does very well in his role, a lot better here in his sorta-natural habitat than he was in Road Games. The only real weak link is Hogg, who plays his villain in a way that feels like he wants to be Sean Harris, and making you wish someone had just thought of hiring Sean Harris. I did quite enjoy his turn here, but I seem to be very much in the minority, and I can see why.

Pastoll and Blaney seem to complement one another perfectly, leading to a film that maintains an entertainment factor even as it wanders from one almost-unbearably tense moment to the next, and I would definitely watch another collaboration between the two of them to see if they can succeed again. And if they once again give Bolger the material to dazzle in a lead role, all the better.

9/10