TIFF25 REVIEW: Little Lorraine [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 115 minutes
Studio: Photon Films and Media
Director(s): Andy Hines
Writer(s): Adam Baldwin & Andy Hines / Adam Baldwin (song “Lighthouse in Little Lorraine”)

Good men don’t end up in situations like this, do they?

The story is true. A small village in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia with less than one hundred close-knit citizens became a key point of interest in an international cocaine smuggling ring. The Canadian coast became the entry from which the drug circulated throughout North America in the 80s and, as the text at the end of Andy Hines’ Little Lorraine explains, few arrests were made. Because these folks don’t talk. They understood the dire straits of their neighbor because they faced the same. And when one person did earn a windfall, the money generally found its way into the community at-large. No jealousy or greed amongst them.

Born from a 2022 song by Adam Baldwin (not that one) in which Hines directed the music video (both for that purpose and as a proof of concept), the two friends worked to flesh out the tale of Jimmy (Stephen Amell), Tommy (Joshua Close), Jake (Steve Lund), and Uncle Huey (Stephen McHattie) into a feature-length script. It starts down in the coal mines beneath the Atlantic Ocean as tragedy strikes to put another nail in the coffin of Little Lorraine’s economy. The local fort had already bought up much of the residential land to expand its tourism footprint and now there was one less employer to help stem the bleeding.

That’s when a man everyone thought was dead returns. A man Father Williams (Sean Astin) has no qualms calling the village’s “prodigal sinner” due to a laundry list of past crimes. Huey says things are different this time. He explains that he only wants to get to know his nephew’s family (Auden Thornton as Jimmy’s wife Emma and their two kids) and help turn the area’s luck around. So, he recruits Jimmy and his two friends to help work a lobster boat under French Canadian captain Thibault’s (Mike Dopud) tutelage. The work is hard but honest and the money more than they ever earned underground. But it’s too good to be true.

These types of stories don’t have much new to say insofar as the act itself. There’s the bumbling local cop (Matt Walsh), the vendetta-driven Interpol agent (J Balvin in his feature film debut), and the flamboyant middleman facilitating the product (Rhys Darby). There are close calls, increased paranoia, and the inevitable Catholic guilt that leads to alcoholism, product sampling, and confessionals. Jimmy and the guys can’t trust Huey. He can’t trust them. It becomes a ticking clock until one of them ends up dead in an “accident” or by their own hand. The stress hits so hard that someone is bound to crack.

So, the appeal with this iteration is that vibe of unwavering loyalty. The certainty that Father Williams will protect his congregation. That the villagers understand authorities beyond their borders are a huge part of why they’re in this mess. When Blavin’s Agent Lozano arrives and asks a deputy for a black coffee, it’s not received with a mound of powdered creamer as a joke or hazing ritual. No, it’s a legitimate sign of disrespect because they know his only purpose is to put their friends in jail. If Interpol and the Canadian government truly cared about them, they wouldn’t have needed to turn to smuggling.

That whole subplot with Lozano is mostly a distraction to infuse comedy both in how he’s treated by the locals and his attempts to help them (i.e. importing Colombian coffee). It’s fun watching Walsh’s Chief Douglas wade through the angry phone calls of fishermen being harassed at the docks and Darby is always good for a couple laughs. Even McHattie brings some humor by playing his role with an effective dose of tempestuous villainy. He’ll rile himself up to diffuse heavy situations posing a threat with a joke only to then pull a knife on those who caused them so they remember who’s in control.

Beyond the color provided by these performances, though, the crime itself is pushed to the background. The real meat lies with Jimmy, Tommy, and Jake unraveling. Amell is the stoic leader with his head on straight (besides a brief spell off the wagon), so it’s Lund and Close who provide the drama once the pressure becomes too much to bear. Even so, I didn’t quite anticipate where things would ultimately go. Whether the familiarity or the humor, I wasn’t prepared for the village to match Huey’s ruthlessness. I’m glad it did, though, because it turns a decent rainy day TV movie into a worthwhile rental.