Frozen River Review

"There's no border here", myopic native Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) tells harried mother Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), "this is free trade between nations."

With this casuistic appeal to her tribal rights, Lila is seeking to justify what is plainly a criminal act - the transport of illegal immigrants from Canada to the US over the frozen St Lawrence River (through the separate jurisdiction of the Mohawk reservation). In another sense, however, Courtney Hunt's Frozen River concerns itself precisely with breaking down borders. Here the lines that divide native from migrant, individual from community and acts of desperation from out-and-out criminality may look solid, but deep-down they are as fragile and fluid as the icy waters from which the film takes its title.

In the New York State town of Massena, on the border of Canada, Ray is a woman in trouble. With the approach of Christmas, Ray's husband, a compulsive gambler, has abandoned her and their two sons (Charlie McDermott, James Reilly), taking with him the money that Ray has painstakingly saved to buy their double-wide dreamhouse. Broke, in debt and at risk of losing everything she has worked for over the years, Ray goes looking for her husband at the bingo hall on the nearby reservation and instead finds Lila, who draws her into a people-smuggling plan that promises to yield easy money.