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Capsule review: ‘Cook County’
In “Cook County,” first-time writer-director (and University of Texas graduate) David Pomes depicts with brutal honesty the devastation wrought by methamphetamines on a family in the piney woods of East Texas. Battling an addiction that he ambivalently acknowledges will lead to his death, Bump (Anson Mount in a career-changing performance) has consigned himself to a ramshackle cabin in the woods where he cooks up meth while neglecting his 6 year-old daughter and alienating his teenage nephew, Abe (Ryan Donowho). When Bump’s brother, Sonny (Xander Berkeley), unceremoniously returns to the family he left behind, he finds his scared and resentful son trapped in Bump’s paranoid and delusional world. Fearing for his son’s life and hoping to end the family’s tragic cycle of meth abuse, Sonny struggles to find dignity in his life while saving his son’s. It hardly mines any new material or emotional depths, but the raw emotion and wonderful performances by Mount and Berkeley make the film worth a viewing.
4 p.m. Monday, 4 p.m. Wednesday, 4 p.m. Saturday at Alamo South
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