Canada, Quebec, USA
2024 99 mins
OV English
Subtitles : French
Neglect, abuse, and devastating fraud are all too frequent fates in store for so many as they pass through the final years of their lives. A callous bureaucracy offers little comfort to the elderly, and all too many opportunities to those who would take advantage of them. Harsh-tongued septuagenarian Ann Hunter is nobody’s fool, but she and her ill husband Chip are nonetheless easy marks for a treacherous legal guardian and his accomplices, plotting to swindle the pair. Soon enough, Ann finds herself with no husband, no money, and no home other than the miserable facility she’s been locked up in. But as her tormentors are about to find out, someone who’s had everything taken away from her is someone with nothing left to lose—and a dark secret of her own.
After decades as a character actor in countless films and TV series (winning numerous awards in the process), Dale Dickey takes centre stage in THE G, delivering a performance fierce and flinty enough to give Eastwood or Bronson pause (and certainly more subtle than either). Like Dickey’s turn as Ann, Montreal director Karl R. Hearne’s second feature film, a favourite on the festival circuit, bristles with quiet, carefully calibrated intensity. Inspired by his own grandmother, apparently one tough cookie, as well as outrage at the frequency of elder abuse right under our noses, Hearne has crafted a gritty revenge thriller laced with shards of bitter humour and anchored by an unconventional yet entirely convincing protagonist—a different shade of noir, with a touch of grey. – Rupert Bottenberg