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FROZEN RIVER
Written & Directed by Courtney Hunt
Produced by Heather Rae
Released by Sony Pictures Classics
USA. 97 minutes. Rated R
With Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, James Reilly, Mark Boone Junior & Michael O’Keefe

When describing the career of Melissa Leo, the words blunt, brisk, and ballsy come to mind. In the 1990s, she was part of the stellar TV drama Homicide: Life on the Street, and her small supporting role (among many) in the unfortunately little seen Western The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada was like a jolt of raw energy. Now she stands alone in the spotlight. 

Maybe it’s her penetrating stare or the foregoing of vanity, but Leo, in the gritty and suspenseful Frozen River, is immediately and unapologetically upfront, having no time for b.s. As a suddenly single working-class mom in upstate New York, she now has the working-class heroine market all to herself, once briefly Edie Falco’s (in her Oz days).

The sincerity of her driven character, Ray Eddy, overcomes any obstacle writer/director Courtney Hunt throws her way, and she does pile on the problems. Ray’s husband, a gambler, has run off with the down payment to a double-wide trailer. Her part-time job at Yankee Dollar (metaphor alert) is hardly enough to support her two sons—breakfast consists of popcorn and Tang. And not only is the payment for the giant flat screen TV overdue, but Christmas is only a few days away and she hasn’t gotten anything from Kmart for under the tree.

Searching for her husband at a bingo parlor on the Mohawk reservation, she sees someone driving off in his car. She chases the car into the backwoods of Mohawk territory to the small trailer of a young woman, who insists that she found the car with the keys in the ignition. A wary Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) makes Ray an incongruous offer—$2,000 to drive the contested Dodge Spirit across the frozen St. Lawrence River into Canada to smuggle in undocumented immigrants—even though the confrontational Ray is packing heat and has already shot at her trailer’s front door. But Ray is middle aged, has a car with a spacious trunk, and is white and less likely to be stopped by the police. With the cards stacked up against her, Ray really has no choice but to say yes.

Lila is more than a generation younger, a Mohawk, and also a mother—her infant son has been taken away from her. And like Ray, she’s treading water. Thankfully, the women’s relationship refrains from becoming overly schematic. Hunt smartly keeps the women at arms length for the most part. If there’s any bonding, it’s tentative.

Overall, the film undoubtedly belongs to Leo. Without her, the plot wouldn’t be believable. Many in the cast are nonprofessionals who have never acted before—a few do not shed their physical awkwardness so that there’s a lopsidedness as the focus jumps back and forth from Ray’s life to Lila’s. And there are several crossroads where Hunt could have taken a much darker turn where the audience would be challenged to still identify with the characters, especially the very opinionated Ray. Hunt ultimately doesn’t risk alienating the audience, and instead stays on safer ground.

However, it’s during the forays into Canada picking up the human cargo where the film is a very good, white-knuckle thriller. Hunt tightens the tension with the temptation of more money, a trooper on patrol, and a series of horrific events, with at least one sequence during the crossing of the black-ice river when your pulse will surely go up. Kent Turner
August 1, 2008