EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS IS NOWHERE

It’s refreshingly hard to tell the good from the no-good in this helping of cops and robbers, Canadian style.

Sharon MacDonald, smart, attractive, a loving mother, wears one of those metallic adornments around her ankle. She’s under house arrest for hospitalizing some wise guy who got out of line. As the operator of an established Toronto “grow room,” Sharon plants and harvests marijuana for profit. Enter Ray, good-looking, immensely appealing to Sharon, with an unnerving proposition likely to make drug kingpin Richard Tremblay unhappy. An unhappy Tremblay means a trembling Sharon, a state familiar to her ever since she knew the ice-eyed kingpin when he was only a scary student prince. On the other hand, Ray’s scheme has almost irresistible payoff potential if Sharon can trust her new partner long enough to double-cross him safely. Newly paired Toronto police detectives Bergeron and Armstrong have trust issues of their own. Neither is sure the other is the solid cop to be hoped for in a partner. Throughout the exposition, persistent, worrisome rumblings indicate that it’s shake-up time in Toronto, and everybody knows that on both sides of the law enforcement divide big players are going down.

Bristling action, a vivid sense of place and nary a plot twist telegraphed. Exceptional work from McFetridge (Dirty Sweet, 2006).