Frozen River
Tags: suspenseful

Plot synopsis:
The film is set shortly before Christmas in the North Country of Upstate New York, near the Akwesasne ('Where the Partridge Drums') St. Regis Mohawk Reservation and the border crossing to Cornwall, Ontario. Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is a discount store clerk struggling to raise two sons with her husband, a compulsive gambler who has disappeared with the funds she had earmarked to finance the purchase of a double-wide mobile home. While searching for him, she encounters Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), a Mohawk bingo-parlor employee who is driving his car, which she claims she found abandoned with the keys in the ignition at the local bus station. The two women, who have both fallen on hard economic times, form a desperate and uneasy alliance and begin trafficking illegal immigrants from Canada into the United States across the frozen St. Lawrence River for $1,200 each.
Ray's older son T.J. wants to find a job and help support the family so they can afford to eat something more substantial than popcorn and Tang. He and his mother clash over whether he should remain in high-school and look after his little brother Ricky or drop out to work. To make matters worse, T.J. sets an outside corner of the trailer afire with a torch in an attempt to unfreeze the water pipe. Lila longs for the day she will be able to reclaim and live with her young son, who was taken from her by her mother-in-law immediately after his birth.
Because the women's route takes them from an Indian reservation in the US to an Indian reserve in Canada, they hope to avoid detection by local law-enforcement. However, their problems escalate when they are asked to smuggle a Pakistani couple and Ray, fearful their duffel bag might contain explosives, leaves it behind in sub-freezing temperatures, only to discover it contained their infant baby when they arrive at their destination. She and Lila retrace their route and find the bag and the baby, which Lila insists is dead, but which she revives moments before being reunited with the baby's parents. The experience leaves her shaken, and she announces she no longer wants to participate in the smuggling operation. But Ray, needing just one more crossing to finance the down payment on her mobile home, coerces her into joining her for one last journey.
They pick up two Asian women from a strip club for crossing. When the club owner tries to short them, Ray successfully threatens him with a gun. When she is re-entering her car, the irate club owner retaliates by shooting Ray in the ear. Shaken, her fast and erratic driving catches the attention of the provincial police. Ray tries to elude capture by crossing the frozen river where one of the wheels of the car breaks through the ice. The four women abandon the vehicle and take refuge at the Indian reservation.
Because the police are demanding a scapegoat, the tribal head decides to excommunicate Lila for five years due to her smuggling history which involved the death of her Mohawk husband. Surprised then saddened by the news, Ray gives in to Lila's pleas to go free for the sake of her children. However, running through the woods, Ray has a fit of conscience and returns. Ray gives her share of money to Lila with instructions for taking care of her (Ray's) sons and seeing through purchase plans for a trailer home. Ray and the illegal immigrants are surrendered to the police and a trooper speculates she will have to serve four months in jail. Ray calls her son T.J. to explain what has happened.
Lila pushes her way into her mother-in-law's home and reclaims her infant son. She and the baby show up at the Eddy trailer while T.J. is still on the phone with his jailed mother. In a day scene, T.J. completes the welding of a bicycle-propelled carousel bearing his younger brother and Lila's strapped in baby. He pedals the carousel while Lila smiles on. A truck nears carrying the new trailer home.

Review: The town where Frozen River takes place is Massena, New York, a few miles from the Canadian border in the middle of a Mohawk reservation, and in the winter it's every bit as cold and grey as the film depicts.
'Frozen River' is a grim little tale of a middle aged woman (Melissa Leo)who's good for nothing, substance abusing,gambler husband has left her & their two sons for points unknown (only after usurping all of the money from the bank--and this,just a week before Christmas).
Courtney Hunt's début feature, "Frozen River", winner of this year's Sundance's Grand Jury Prize, is as tense as a great thriller should be, and also a heartfelt, poignant drama.Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) was just abandoned by her druggie husband, having to take care of their two kids and pay for their house alone (otherwise, they'll be evicted).
With her minimum wage job at a local store, Ray can't make enough money, but chance will introduce her to a young Mohawk, Lila (Misty Upham), who smuggles illegal immigrants across the frozen St. Lawrence River (between New York State and Québec), and both will be forced to risk a lot in order to get the money they need.Hunt's writing/directing is secure and reveals a very promising talent, but the film's major strength is the extraordinary performances of the lead actresses, in particular Melissa Leo ("21 Grams", "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada"), magnificent character actress turned lead.
She manages to hold her own with Leo. Her lack of experience as an actress in contrast to Leo's filmography may be what has worked for her as a single mother who is rather young and new to motherhood while Ray is someone with two kids (one of whom is a 15 year old).In 'Frozen River' the broken American dream is broken but one has to survive.
Melissa Leo and Misty Upham perform two innocent and mature women driven into the crime world after desperation.Frozen River carries a vital independent spirit that even though the value of contents of the film is so unassuming, it brings in both sentimental and intellectual prestige.
As a result Melissa Leo, who plays the mother, begins to smuggle illegal immigrants across the border to make money.Melissa Leo's performance in this movie is very good but hard to watch.
In Massena, New York, nearby a Mohawk Reservation and the Canadian border, the middle-aged Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is left by her husband a couple of days before Christmas.
Lila lures her telling that she has a buyer for the vehicle, but she actually wants to use the large trunk to smuggler illegal immigrants from Canada into the United States through a frozen river in the Mohawk Reservation.
"Frozen River" is an overrated little movie with a realistic and depressing story of two women that smuggle people to raise money to support their families.
Melissa Leo has a stunning performance in the role of a desperate mother that is going to lose the house she has dreamed to raise her sons after her addicted husband stealing the family savings.
Driving over the frozen water of the title allows Ray Eddy (veteran actress Melissa Leo) temporarily to earn quick money by smuggling illegals into the US with the grudging assistance of a young Mohawk woman called Lila (Misty Upham), who's done it before.
"Frozen River" is an example of what great indie film making is all about.Instead of special effects and outrageous plot twists, we are shown real people caught up in some of the significant issues of life.First let me say that the acting by Melissa Leo, and especially Misty Upham is superb.
It's a bleak indie film about struggling to survive.I found it well written with strong performances by Melissa Leo & Charlie McDermott.The movie was very moody with some intense scenes and generated a strong emotional response for me.
It went on to win many other awards and even received two Academy Award nominations for best lead performance from Melissa Leo and for original screenplay written by Courtney Hunt who also directed this grim indie film.
The first was for writer-director Courtney Hunt's original screenplay, and the second was a best actress nod for Melissa Leo. Finally catching up with this film, as the first in my "SHITTY Christmas!" series, I'm firstly left bemused as to why the Academy were so impressed with the clunky script, and secondly, angry that Leo's staggering performance didn't get the gong it deserved.Set on the snowbound American side of the New York/Quebec border, Leo plays the fatigued shop assistant Ray, with a ballsy, pugnacious streak.
Whenever Melissa Leo isn't in the frame, Frozen River is too dour to be entertaining, and everything ends up grinding to a halt.Fortunately enough, Hunt is aware that Leo really is the star of the movie, giving her the respect, creative license and screen time she deserves to pull off one astonishing breakthrough performance.
"The greatest poverty is not to live In a physical world, to feel that one's desire Is too difficult to tell from despair." Wallace StevensHaving just previewed the ersatz horror film, Baghead, I was not prepared for a true horror drama set in the bleak New York/Canada border: Frozen River.
It's a social/realist indie that depicts with simple storytelling the harrowing experience of a single mom, Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), smuggling aliens from Canada to the US.Rarely will anyone see as authentic a presentation of the quiet desperation of the impoverished making it through a Christmas, in this case with three young boys to please.
The white Ray with her five and fifteen year old boys and Mohawk Lila (Misty Upham) with her baby join together to make quick money smuggling aliens over a treacherous, borderless, remote, and frozen section of the St. Lawrence River leading to Quebec.
Melissa Leo earned a richly deserved Best Actress nomination for her stunning work in "Frozen River" playing a woman in upstate New York who's so down-on-her-luck that she resorts to smuggling illegal aliens across the border as a means of paying her bills.
Recently abandoned by her ne'er-do-well, compulsive gambler husband and desperate for money to support herself and the two young sons she is struggling to raise, Ray agrees to drive immigrants across the frozen St. Lawrence River that separates the United States from Canada.
But in "Frozen River," writer/director Courtney Hunt shows us what it is like for people who are forced to live paycheck to paycheck, worrying about where their next meal is coming from or how they'll be able to afford presents for their children at Christmas - and for whom happiness might well come in the form of an upgraded doublewide mobile home with a good padding of insulation and a Jacuzzi built right into the middle.
Frozen River is more than just a film or a work of art, it is a fine portrayal of the tough way of life.An all together moving piece of art is only accompanied by Oscar worthy performances, which Leo seemed to nail on the nose.
When her husband disappears with the family's money, Ray joins up with Lila (Misty Upham), a Mohawk woman, and they start transporting illegal immigrants across the US-Canada border.Almost every scene in this movie tenses the viewer up.
Two single mothers - the white Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) and the Mohawk Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) - become unlikely allies in a struggle to provide for their kids in this unusual and moving tale both written and directed by Courtney Hunt.
Melissa Leo and Misty Upham star as Ray Eddy and Lila Littlewolf, two struggling single mothers in 2008's "Frozen River." They form an unfriendly alliance to make money by smuggling illegal immigrants into the USA via the Mohawk Reservation on the border of New York and Quebec.
Later, when something mind-blowing happens, Ray tells Lila that she did something really amazing, but Lila openly admits, "It wasn't me; it was the Creator." I mentioned the questionable acting of some of the Native cast members, but I'd rather have weak acting with real Natives than great acting with people pretending to be Natives.The film runs 97 minutes and was shot in Plattsburgh, New York, Ontario and the St. Lawrence River.GRADE: B+.
In 'Frozen River', debut director Courtney Hunt's tough-minded story about life beyond the safety net, an impoverished and fiery mother (well-played by Melissa Leo) gets involved in a people-smuggling operation on the U.S.-Candian border.
The Eddy family are one very much on the edge; a later altercation with a descendant of the Native American's whose land centuries ago this once was, named Lila Littlewolf (Upham), sees Ray put a bullet square into the entrance door to her trailer home, this following some aggravation – we get the feeling six months ago, it may very well have been a warning shot into the air but that sense of her being well past that point of 'warning' has arrived, that here and now at this new level of agitation is the plateau upon which she now resides.The film will come to follow these two and their uneasy alliance, an element to any film which when executed with the sort of bravado and effectiveness as is rather demonstrated here, can make for some fascinating viewing.
Lila, a mere bingo house worker patrolling the floors and the player's little-to-no bingo playing activity, the film coming to reveal lives an equally dishevelled lifestyle in rather humble shack-like conditions; somebody whom is additionally devoid of a husband but very much with that out-casted, hermit-like existence similar to that of Ray. Their duty, as perpetrated by some local indigenous people whom Lila knows, is to smuggle people across the aforementioned border with what the instigators claim is within legality but was always ambiguous in its criminality, for large amounts of money; the zone through which they must journey is the titular frozen river, a stretch of icy nothingness doubling up as a moral grey zone neatly capturing the nature of Ray and Lila's activities; a zone devoid of most things and set well away from the confines of whatever passes for civilisation.
The film additionally makes use of Ray's infant son and his desperate pleas for a set of small, metallic cars with which he can play; Frozen River utilising such a notion or potential event without really exploiting such a child-like and innocent desire whilst keeping us wholly aware that if its lead does indeed get away with what it is she's doing, these two realities will be able to come to fruition.
Also, Melissa Leo packs in a winning performance, that makes this difficult story even more intriguing.'Frozen River' focuses on two working-class women who smuggle illegal immigrants in the trunk of a car from Canada to the U.S in order to make ends meet.'Frozen River' is a disturbing story, and Courtney Hunt's writing & direction never runs away from that fact.
Frozen river's driving forces are the two magnificent performances by Melissa Leo and Misty Upham who play women bound by desperation, attempting hopelessly to find a better life for tomorrow.
As a good little IMDb member with a near unquenchable curiosity for the people behind shows,I found myself looking up her resume--it seemed as of about 2007,it appeared that the amount of running material about her was kinda sparse--and found out that,on the contrary,she's been doing A LOT of movies(as well as quite a few guest spots on TV)of late,just that many of them were not commercially very well-received or promoted.The steady,rising good word on this film,coupled with Miss Leo's Oscar nomination for Best Actress,ratchet up my interest in this show,but had been convinced that due to the lack of publicity or common knowledge of this show,that I'd probably not get to see this until WELL after award season.
Ray Addy(Leo,earning her award nod and,though I have yet to see 60%of the Best Actress academy noms,I still feel like this performance could stand up to any and all of them)works a tough,low-paying job for lots of hours and takes care of her two sons,one a teen,one still a grade-schooler,in upstate,border town New York.
When her worthless husband(ex?)runs off with the money she's saving for,among other things,buying a new custom-built home,her pursuit of the cad will have her crossing paths with Lila Littlewolf(Misty Upham,also very good here),a socially-awkward misfit who has gotten adept at smuggling illegals in though the U.S./Canadian border.
Whether it's Ray, the single mom who lives in a trailer on the U.S. Canada border and works in a dollar story, or an immigrant family trying to smuggle their child into the U.S., or a native American whose baby has been taken away from her, all share the hope for a better future for their kids.The actors in this are amazing, and bring you into a world most of us know little about including life on an Indian reservation and the business of smuggling immigrants into this country.
Academy Award Best Actress nominee Melissa Leo does deliver a robust performance as Ray Eddy, a northern New York mother of two boys living a poverty life in a beat-up trailer.
Ray does not win no lotto but she does encounter Lila (Misty Upham), a young Mohawk Indian woman who offers her an opportunity to drive & smuggle illegal immigrants from the Quebec-New York border in exchange for nice cashola payoff.
Frozen River (2008)**** (out of 4)Melissa Loe plays the mother of two who has her husband leave her days before Christmas with the money they had been saving for a new double-wide trailer.
It doesn't exactly scream "distribute me as a major motion picture." Then again, those who give "Frozen River" a chance will be incredibly impressed and fascinated with an independent drama unlike any other.Oscar-nominated actress Melissa Leo, whose done numerous small projects/roles in the past, gives a strong performance as Ray Eddy, a mother working at minimum wage to support two kids, a teenager and a 5-year-old, whose gambling-addicted husband has run out on them again, leaving them with nothing to live on.
In search of her husband, she has a run in with a young woman (Misty Upham) on the local Mohawk Reservation who pulls her into the profitable world of smuggling Asian illegals across the border via driving over the river which is frozen in winter.
Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) finds a way to survive and feed her children more than popcorn and Tang, along with helping them deal with their father's absence.She hooks up with Lila Littlejohn (Misty Upham), a Mohawk who lives alone, claiming her mother-in-law stole her child.
"Frozen River," written and directed by Courtney Hunt, is a minimalist film about a hard luck middle aged white woman (Melissa Leo) who comes together with a Mohawk woman (Misty Upham) in a criminal enterprise -- smuggling aliens into the U.S. from Canada across the "frozen river" in the dead of winter.
She sees the ever-growing ambivalence and frustration in her older son, knowing he can help make money, yet constantly shot down as he must finish school; the youthful exuberance in young son Ricky as the dream of a real home may be taken away, but all he can see is that Santa will make it happen; and the fact that her husband is all but done with their family, seeing their money as a way to extend his gambling habit, not as a future within reach.While Leo has been lauded over the most, with good reason as she is fantastic, (hopefully this may be her Love Liza, the film that finally gave Oscar-regular Philip Seymour Hoffman his first starring role), but I can't stop thinking about Upham's performance.
If anything, Frozen River is the kind of "story for women" that could be considered too *good* for the likes of their work.This is not to say I found the movie perfect or entirely one of the year's best.
Overall "Frozen River" I have to say was one of the 2008 surprise hits and probably one of the better films made in 08, even though it's message is that of illegal trade it shows that you feel for a poor mother proving people will do anything for money and a better way of living..
In this film, Melissa Leo bares the rough, tough life of Ray Eddy whose husband Troy has left her and their two sons, T.J. and Ricky right before Christmas.
It's an original story: Ray (played by Melissa Leo), a mother of two children has just had her gambler husband run off with the down payment on a new trailer she was in the process of purchasing.
Ray drives her car with Lila over the frozen river inside the Mohawk Reservation and picks up the illegal aliens on the other side of the border and then drives them back to New York.Right away I had a hard time buying that the gambler husband would simply abandon his family.
The illegal immigrant dispute between the U.S. and Mexico has been such a hot-button topic lately that I never think about illegal immigration being a problem between the U.S. and Canada."Frozen River" uses that very issue as a backdrop for its story about a desperate single mother (Melissa Leo) in upstate New York who turns to illegal smuggling as a means for making money to buy her and her two sons a new home.
Written and directed by Courtney Hunt, "Frozen River" stars Melissa Leo as Ray Eddy, an impoverished woman who lives with her two sons in a dilapidated trailer in upper state New York.
It's a quiet story of mostly quiet moments that will touch you if you open your heart to it.Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) is a woman who looks like she's lived a rough life and still is.
The cops eventually tumble into Ray and Lila's scheme and one of these women will have to sacrifice herself for the other and her family.Frozen River is a good little movie that focuses on a few weeks in the life of working class America.