Meanwhile, small-time hood Tito (Andrew Simpson) enacts a plan to steal drugs from some local dealers. It works, but when they pursue him he ducks into the only place he can find to escape them – Sarah's flat. He scares Sarah into letting him hide there, then comes up with another plan. He'll hide the drugs at her place where no one would look for them, sell them off a little at a time, and split the profits with her. Still frightened, Sarah reluctantly goes along – she doesn't have much choice, and she could certainly use the money – but then she realizes something: this new underworld contact might give her a way to find out what really happened to her husband. Unfortunately for both of them, the local crime boss, Leo (Edward Hogg), isn't about to let the theft of his drugs go unpunished.
A Good Woman Is Hard To Find was directed by Abner Pastoll and premiered at the Fantasia International Film Festival in 2019.
Tropes include:
- Action Girl: Sarah evolves into this over the course of the film, first Killing in Self-Defense to defend herself from attempted rape and murder, then managing to kill a crime boss along with his armed thugs despite having no apparent prior experience in using guns.
- Attempted Rape: When Sarah's son Ben gets into Tito's drugs, Sarah fakes that she's into him, distracting Tito with the offer of sex. She can't go through with it, though, and he's so angry he tries to rape her.
- Ax-Crazy: Leo is very unstable, and his solution to virtually every problem is violence. When Sarah shows up with Tito's severed head, even he and his mooks are taken aback and decide she's a "psycho."
- Beneath Notice: No one suspects that Sarah, who so far as most know is just a single working mother of two kids, would be behind a Dublin crime boss and his men's killings, along with the body parts found in a rubbish center. The news report at the end attributes this to a rival gang.
- Big Damn Heroes: The bin men who see Sarah is being harassed stop and intervene, so she can run off with her kids.
- Blackmail: At the end of the film Sarah gets revenge on a creepy man by threatening that she'll claim he flashed her son and makes him pay for a threat to stop her.
- Blaming the Victim: One of the cops who comes to Sarah's house victim-blames her for having been with (he thinks) an abusive boyfriend, enraging her.
- Chekhov's Gun: Several, though they're not always obvious. Sarah uses both her vibrator and the knife she used earlier to retrieve batteries to defend herself when Tito tries to rape her. She then uses the gun she finds on his dead body to kill Leo and his men, then uses Leo's hammer to finish one of them off.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Leo tortures Tito's flatmates in an attempt to find him.
- Damsel out of Distress: Sarah manages to save herself from rape and murder by Tito through stabbing him with a nearby knife.
- Decapitation Presentation: Sarah presents Leo with Tito's severed head.
- Disposing of a Body: Sarah has to gruesomely cut up Tito's body after she kills him in self-defense, then drops the pieces in different garbage bins.
- Dumb Struck: Sarah's son Ben hasn’t spoken since witnessing his father's murder. A therapist says that he can speak, but that his brain, as a defense mechanism, pushed the memory of that violence into a dark corner, and unfortunately his speech went with it.
- Get Out!: Sarah angrily orders a cop to leave after he makes a victim-blaming comment over her being (he thinks) abused by her boyfriend.
- Grammar Nazi: After Sarah says Leo Miller must "stay away from me and my children" he corrects this to "my children and I". Which is, hilariously, wrong.note
- Grew a Spine: Sarah learns to stand up for herself over the course of the film, as she's forced to just as a matter of survival.
- The Irish Mob: The film deals heavily with the illegal drug trade in Dublin, and crime boss Leo Miller is the film's antagonist after Sarah gets unwilling connected to a man who stole his drugs.
- Killing in Self-Defense: Sarah kills Tito as he's trying to rape and murder her. Though justified, it still leaves her traumatized. Later she also kills Miller and his men, who were going to murder her if she hadn't.
- Masturbation Means Sexual Frustration: Struggling Single Mother Sarah, one lonely night, decides to use her vibrator to take the edge off, only to discover that it needs batteries, causing her to scramble around the house until she finally removes the batteries from one of her children's toys with a butter knife, showing how desperate she is to experience just a modicum of pleasure.
- Mistaken for Prostitute: Sarah gets hit on repeatedly by an older man who works in the market and believes she's working as a prostitute-he hints that he's interested, to her dismay.
- Motor Mouth: Tito is a bit of one, talking constantly to Sarah to the point he hardly even notices how afraid of him she is.
- No Sympathy: Sarah's mother acts annoyed by her still mourning her husband, saying she had a whole future ahead before the two got married (he wasn't a good match in her view). Naturally, this makes Sarah angry. Later on, though, she apologizes for this, implying she'd been jealous as Sarah is the only person she'd ever really loved.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Sarah and Alice spend most of the movie arguing, especially as Sarah's behavior seems to get more and more mysterious. When, towards the end, Sarah says that Alice was a good mother, Alice responds, "Now you're scaring me." (they don't have a good relationship, and they had argued in their previous scene).
- Parental Sexuality Squick: When Sarah and Alice finally have a calm heart-to-heart, Alice admits she and Sarah's father had never really been in love, and that he had probably only married her because he wanted sex. Sarah can only respond, "Jesus, Mom..."
- Police Are Useless: The police do nothing to solve Sarah's husband's murder. When she gets coerced into helping a thief, Sarah never calls them, possibly jaded by this. After she kills him in self-defense, they only come over afterward, with one being very unsympathetic to her apparent situation. They never feature in the plot again, as she goes about solving things herself.
- Struggling Single Mother: Sarah is a widow with two kids, and her husband was recently murdered. Because of this, she's struggling, with her shown not being able to pay for everything early on at the market, which a female clerk is sympathetic over, saying they've all been there.
- Trauma Conga Line: Sarah is a widow starting out, mourning the death of her husband (who had been murdered) and struggling along with their two kids. Then she's coerced into hosting a thief and also becoming a partner in crime to him. She's forced to kill him in self defense, then dispose of his body afterward. It doesn't end there though, since the drug dealer whom he stole from goes after her to find his drugs. She's forced to kill the guy and his thugs too, so she can live, along with her kids.
- Verbal Tic: Lucy has a habit of repeating words she hears. Sometimes it's funny, other times... not so much.
