This is the Nicolas Cage version of Mud. It's the Nick version of A Perfect World. It's the Cage version of Gran Torino. What I'm saying is that I've seen this before. It's a movie that an actor does when he wants to be taken seriously and be in contention for an award. Unfortunately for Nick, I think it's unlikely that this will get enough attention to help him out. Also, those movies all had better actors.
This movie is about the dark side of the back woods and small towns. If you've never seen Justified, this might be a fresh take on rural America. Nick runs a small group of guys whose job it is to kill trees. They inject trees with poison so the logging company is legally allowed to chop down the trees. Then the resulting field can be used to grow a more useful kind of tree. You see, it's a metaphor like a hammer hitting you on the head (wait, no, that was a simile).
Tye Sheridan plays a kid who is dealing with his no-good, drunken father and living in a condemned house in the woods with his mother and sister. Tye has a strong work ethic, but he is no match for the physical and emotional abuse laid upon him by his father. Nick sees the potential in the boy, but he's also dealing with his own problems, so he doesn't want to get too in over his head when dealing with the kid.
I don't know why Gary Poulter didn't get his name on the poster or even in the "starring" section of the Wikipedia article. He played Tye's father, and he played a great drunken, abusive jerk who you inevitably wish comes across a very bad thing that may do the thing that bad things do to bad guys. His character is a good kind of realistic bad guy who shouldn't be a real person, but you could totally imagine him really being out there.
Ronnie Gene Blevins plays a much less realistic bad guy, and I really think the movie would have been better without that character. He adds nothing good to the story, and he takes what would otherwise be a down-to-earth movie with realistic challenges and the dirt and grime of everyday and turns it into a bit of a farce.
Direction was okay
Acting was okay
Story was okay
Dialog was good
Costumes were spot on
2.25/5