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Dec 13, 201170Its raw performances and dirty-realist immersion in a harsh environment keep Cook County engrossing.
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70Despite a few continuity problems, this rough-edged, low-budget drama impresses with spot-on performances, perfect-pitch dialogue and an overall sense that something bad might happen at any moment, unless something worse happens first.
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Dec 15, 201158Cook County is an evocative portrait of the drug blight that's infected swaths of our country, but not only does it not get beyond that, its almost-gleeful horrorshow quality comes with the tinge of exploitation. Misery begets more misery, but to what end?
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50What we need is for the writer and director, David Pomes, to wallow less in aimless dialogue and lowlife sordidness. What we need is a point.
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50There's nothing slick or entertaining about the crumbling existence of Pomes' unsalvageable antiheroes.
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Dec 13, 201140Pomes squeezes in a few well-observed details among the recycled white-trash clichés, but any AMC viewer who's tuned into the lead-in for Mount's TV Western - Breaking Bad - expects far, far more from his or her meth-fueled entertainment.
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40Rather than viewing moral chaos from the eye of a storm, director David Pomes watches his movie blow off into the storm itself.
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38Unlike AMC's Breaking Bad, meth here doesn't reflect current, perilous economic realties; rather, it's just a low-rent drug used by degenerates whose lives say nothing about anything.
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12Depravity and addiction can be dramatic and fascinating, or they can be as they are in this week's indie filthathon Cook County.