Cape Breton, Nova Scotia once boasted a thriving and progressive mining community that was the pride of Canada. Despite the dangers associated with the work, an individual could spend 20 plus years working the mines and provide a comfortable life for their family. However, when the industry began to dry up, many found themselves adrift without any life rafts to keep their loved ones afloat.

The sense of uncertainty and desperation that unemployment can foster is at the heart of Andy Hines feature debut Little Lorraine.

Inspired by true events, Hines’ crime drama centers around a group of miners who find themselves intertwined in an international cocaine smuggling ring. After a tragic explosion leaves 10 men dead, and the local mine is abruptly shut down, Jimmy (Stephen Amell) is unsure how he will provide for his family. The only option on the table is to possibly work at another mine further away, which does not sit well with his wife, Emma (Auden Thornton), as it comes with its own set of dangers. Enter Jimmy’s estranged uncle Huey (Stephen McHattie), a man whose shady past includes being the mastermind behind Cape Breton’s gambling circuit, with a business proposal.

Claiming to now run a lobster fishing company and wanting to rebuild burned family bridges, Huey offers Jimmy a role on his boat. Reluctantly agreeing to take the job, after some coaxing by Emma, who believes his uncle’s promises that he will protect him at all costs, Jimmy recruits his fellow mining buddies Tommy (Joshua Close) and Jake (Steve Lund), the latter of whom cannot even swim, to work the boat as well. Taking a crash course in all things lobstering, the men soon find themselves with a new sense of purpose on the water as they can bring home good money to their families once again.

Eating at the table of prosperity comes with a steep bill, though. It does not take long for the men to discover that Huey is using the boat to smuggle cocaine into North America from Venezuela. Tangling with dangerous drug dealers, Tim (Rhys Darby) and Rico (Bria Mack Gets a Life’s Manuel Rodriguez-Saenz), and a crooked funeral director, who transports the narcotics in his coffins, Jimmy and his friends find themselves in a hole that they cannot easily dig out of. Complicating things further is that an Interpol detective, Agent Lozano (musician J Balvin), is on their scent and closing in quickly.

As the pressure rises, and Jimmy and his pals resort to destructive vices to cope, Little Lorraine uses the men’s predicament to ponder what happens to communities during times of economic strife. Hines’ film forces the viewer to question which villain is more dangerous, the one selling drugs to the downtrodden or the corporations that place communities in that vulnerable state by robbing them of their livelihood?

Used and discarded like napkins in a diner, the audience is always aware of the fragile mixture of anger and sense of emasculation that Jimmy attempts to navigate. Little Lorraine never condones the men’s actions, but one at least understands how they were easily lured into the manipulative uncle’s web. Where Hines’ film could have used a little more seasoning is in the way it builds and explores the members of Jimmy’s neighbourhood.

In the world the film presents, community is treated as a tightknit family, one that either confesses their sins to the local priest (Sean Astin) or takes it to their grave. However, one is not giving a true sense of the individuals and personalities in the Cape Breton town to justify some of the events that happen in the latter portion of the film. The most notable being the film’s ending which feels as if it was ripped out of another movie entirely.

Despite the rocky road to its climax, Hinds constructs a thrilling crime drama that is elevated by McHattie’s sensational turn. As the manipulative Huey, a man who attempts to keep everyone under his corrupt thumb, McHattie delivers a riveting and menacing performance. His turn is nicely accentuated by Amell’s strong work as the everyman who finds himself inadvertently stepping into a narcotic quicksand. Bringing resonating layers to a role that could have easily been one-note in a lesser actor’s hands, Amell gives the film its resonating core.

Capturing the ways desperation can lead to choices with steep consequences; Little Lorraine is taut crime drama that shows what can occur when a community is pushed to the brink.

Little Lorraine screened as part of the 2025 Toronto International Film Festival.

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