Frozen River

2008. Dir: Courtney Hunt. Starring: Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael O'Keefe and Mark Boone Junior. ●●●○○



I look up at the rating and I now feel like I'm being unduly harsh. That the performances and the set design and the editing and even the script were so full of realistic and beautiful nuances that it deserves a 4 blob score. However I have marke dit down because as a thriller, which is what Courtney Hunt has stated it is, I feel it failed.



The story follows an unlikely alliance between two women struggling to make ends meet in upstate New York. Ray's (Leo) husband has left her and taken the deposit for a new trailer days before Christmas, Lila (Upham) is living on the margins of the Mohawk reservation desperately hoping to see her daughter again. Thrown together by circumstances the women transport illegal immigrants through the reservation from Canada to the US.

They learn to trust each other (against their own judgements) as they build up the capital to change their lives forever. The theme of what it means to be a mother and the strength of that bond is repeated during the film, including a touching moment towards the end of the second act when they help another woman look for her daughter.

Unfortunately that's not enough to stop the plot from derailing. A desperate last job, bullets whizzing, car chases over the eponymous waterways and a stand off at the edges of the reservation all feel like they've been forced into the screenplay. The tension from the relationship alone would have been enough to make it work without the levels of excess displayed.

The acting is excellent throughout, especially from the two leads who both create very believable three dimensional women. James Reilly as Ray's youngest son was also a lot of fun, performing at just the right level (many child actors would have over egged it).

The depiction of the level of income Ray has was also deftly handled, means of popcorn and Tang seemed real, the bathroom was suitably grotty and nothing within her trailer of their limited possesions seemed out of place.

Writer-director Courtney Hunt has done a good job for a first feature, and if she tightens up the next script and focuses on making a character piece rather than a thriller with characters then I expect it will be excellent.