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Don't Believe the Hype

Best movie ever!

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

Melissa Leo first came to my attention when I saw "The Fighter". She won an Academy Award for her role as the hardened mother, the type who makes you feel as if you're walking on eggshells (she let slip a curse word during her acceptance speech).Two years earlier Leo had played a lead role in "Frozen River". She plays Ray, a woman working a minimum wage job and living in a double-wide mobile home. 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. Whether it's the claustrophobic settings or the risks of something happening during the transports, the movie pulls no punches in its focus on the marginalized sectors of society. The snow and ice emphasize the desperation that drives these women to start breaking the law. I recommend it, as I do every movie in which I've seen Melissa Leo. Too bad about Misty Upham's untimely death in 2014.

The movie opens on a cold winter day—a few days before Christmas. We first see the face of a crying woman, Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), smoking a cigarette; her teeth are cigarette-stained and her faces is ruddy, almost malnourished. Ray is sitting on the front step of her single-wide trailer. One gets the impression that she is living from day to day. Ray is crying because her husband has just taken off with the all of the money that they had saved for a major payment on a double-wide trailer. He is a compulsive gambler and has taken off in one of their two old cars, leaving her and her two sons without any money. It soon becomes clear that this is not the first time he has done this and that neither she nor her 15-year-old son, T.J. (Charlie DcDermott), expects him to come back. Yet, she goes to the Bingo parlor in the nearby Mohawk reservation (between New York State and Quebec) to try to find him. With barely enough money to buy gas (and without the $5 entrance fee needed to get into the bingo place), she begs the woman taking the admission fee to let her go into the place to just look for her husband. She is not admitted. When she comes back to her car, she sees a young Indian woman, Lila (Misty Upham) driving off in her husband's car (which had been left abandoned with the keys in the seat).Ray follows Lila to her small trailer to get her car back. As Ray retrieves her car, Lila tells her that she has a friend who will pay $2,000 for it (more than it is worth---and without papers). Why? He is a smuggler who is always looking for cars with pop up trunks. Ray agrees to have Lila show her to the buyer, while showing Lila her gun and telling her that she is not afraid to use it if she has to. To get to the car dealer, they have to cross a wide frozen river (the St. Lawrence?—the St. Regis?) that divides the Mohawk reservation and serves as the border between Canada and the US. When they reach Lila's friend on the other side of the international border, he gives them $1,200 as two people are being into the trunk to be taken to the US. Thus begins the reluctant smuggling relationship between Ray and Lila with Lila supplying the contacts and Ray supplying the car with the pop trunk--as well as the fact that Ray is 'white' and police won't suspect her of smuggling across people the border. Lila and Ray make several smuggling 'runs,' with no two coming off the same. However, when the arrangement goes wrong, the consequences affect both women and families in an unexpected way. The story and characters are well-developed in this screenplay (written and directed by Courtney Hunt), and Melissa Leo's acting is well worth her Oscar nomination. Leo would eventually win an Oscar for her role in The Fighter (2011).

Melissa Leo is a very good actress but even she cannot raise this movie above my 5 out of 10 rating. The movie's story line is just too depressing. I fail to glean any family values from this movie even if there are many families who actually live in trailer homes that are falling apart as they sustain their children on popcorn and Tang.Single moms who will try just about anything to survive and keep their families together don't try and smuggle illegal aliens across the frozen tundra for a few hundred dollars and that is IF the really hardened criminals will pay them for the risk these women are taking.If you want to be depressed and feel sorry for two single moms then this movie is for you. As for me, I found the movie ran very slow, lacking in a good movie production and editing, and just overall a boring watch.

"Frozen River" is a captivating independent movie that stars Oscar winner Melissa Leo as a long-suffering wife named Ray who is wed to gambling addicted husband who has fled the coop shortly before the Holiday Season. On her own raising her adolescent son T.J. (Charlie McDermott) and her toddler son Ricky (James Reilly) and if you think raising two children in squalor is bad, Ray is constantly badgered by creditors. All there is to eat on the menu at their house is powered drinks and potato chips. She works at a dollar store where she's been been contemplating a promotion that has been promised to her for two years. Melissa and her two offspring reside in a trailer that is not in the best of condition. She has dreams for something much more better. Lady luck comes her way when she joins forces with a young Native woman from a Mohawk Nation that rests between the United States and Canadian border. As an alliance they embark on smuggling illegal immigrants into North America. Ray will continue to do it until she has enough dough for a better establishment. But it isn't until very long that the police are hot on her trail. The question is will she be able to make enough to support her family?At first Ray and Lila (Misty Upham) start off as strictly business allies. But as the film progresses, they begin to progressively have faith in each other. The movie also looks at the poverty that's faced in the reservation and how neglected and overlooked Native reservations have faced over the years in both Canada and the United States. This one should be admired by many. It tells a bleak observation that people will do anything to get what they want and it's not always a bad thing. In the case of Ray, she's doing an illegal mission, but not for selfish purposes. There's no explosions or cheap thrills, but the photography is top notch and the character development is so natural, you wouldn't think they were performing. It truly is a gem that is highly recommended.