Frozen River (2008)

I had just seen Karie Bible perform an excellent Super Panel for Holly Shorts.  One of the panelists was Mark Fergus, who recently made Iron Man a cinematic super hero to contend with.  But he has done independent and goes back and forth.  All panelists gave intriguing answers.

I was going to go back and see some more shorts but as I walked back I passed FROZEN RIVER.  This got a lot of attention and good word of mouth when I was in Sundance and knew there were native Americans in the cast.  Being a fan of diversity, and have rarely seen people smuggling from Canada, Quebec to be more specific, to New York, United States, it got my curiosity.

Writer-director Courtney Hunt gave not quite an anti-Christmas movie but it’s not the kind of Christmas movie that makes one feel warm and fuzzy inside.  In fact, the weather outside is downright hostile.  Driving is extra dangerous and even the river that crosses into Mohawk country is frozen enough to drive on. Melissa Leo portrays a middle aged store clerk whose saddled with two sons.  The husband, never seen, has left them for gambling debts.  She’s forced to work part time for an unsympathetic boss who’s half her age.  She is desperate as she’s facing foreclosure and needs money fast.

While looking for her no good husband. an overweight Mohawk woman played by Misty Upham steals Leo’s car, actually the extra one the husband had left with the keys inside.  Leo tracks Upham and threatens to shoot her if she doesn’t return the keys.  However, the car is stuck and once Leo finds out how Upham makes money by human smuggling she’s in.

Now the main thrust of the adventure is for these unlikely women to team up with Leo as the driver and Upham doing the setups.  It is revealed early on that Upham is badly nearsighted and has a son of her own that she can’t get to.  Mark Boone Jr. plays Leo’s older son and gets involved in some money making schemes on his own.  Some of those schemes almost backfires on him but he does get the toy for his younger brother.

I won’t give much more of this away because I do recommend it.  There is suspense, poignancy, the implied hostility that natives and whites have for each other without being preachy, and strong characterizations that occur when the script is well written.

And actually, one does feel good at the end.

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