Race, class and cultural divides are probed with intriguing understatement in “God’s Country.” Julian Higgins’ first feature can be taken as a drama with thriller elements or a low-key thriller wit…
’ first feature can be taken as a drama with thriller elements or a low-key thriller with atypical dramatic nuance, working either way as a quietly effective balance between genre, social issue and character study elements. Based on a James Lee Burke story, it starsas a college professor whose fish-out-of-water status in rural Montana is exacerbated when she runs afoul of trespassing working-class hunters.
The note she leaves on its windshield is ignored, and it’s back the next day, when she gets to meet the scruffy, somewhat intimidating Cody brothers, Nathan and Samuel . They aren’t very apologetic about using her property as a deer-hunting gateway sans permission, nor is she very tolerant of their uninvited presence. Once they return a third day, she tows their car; in retaliation, an arrow is shot into her front door.
“God’s Country” keeps upsetting expectations of a predictable revenge thriller, even as it seems to embrace some of those tropes. While born-and-raised residents like the Codys — who live and work in far humbler circumstances — may resent Sandra as a privileged outsider, she herself feels excluded. Not least at work, where as an African-American woman she’s isolated amidst an all-white, mostly male faculty.