FILM REVIEW: Frozen River
© A.J. Malouin 2008
(Ratings: 1 by The Film Snob and 4 by Caryl.)
(See our side-bar page “How Caryl & Al and The Film Snob Rate Movies”)
(2008/USA. Written and directed by Courtney Hunt.)
This is the best film out there right now.
One mark of a great film is that it creates an entire world quickly and dumps us into it totally. From the very first scene, “Frozen River” takes us out of our own world and plops us into the world of those living on the outer edges of the good life. We are put Immediately at the New-York-State/Canadian border, in the short, cold days preceding Christmas.
Christmas is not important at all in the culture of one of our two protagonists. She is therefore not the one with which We White People are apt to identify. Not in the beginning, anyway.
Before this film is over, however, we are close friends with this Mohawk Indian woman. We are also close friends with a white woman working for minimal wages at the local Yankee Dollar…with the Mohawk Indian woman’s infant…with the white woman’s 7- and 15-year-old boys…with a New York State Trooper with a big heart…with an illegal Pakistani immigrant (to the U.S.) woman and her husband whose baby accident has been left to die (perhaps!) out on the frozen St. Lawrence River…and with a whole gaggle of supporting characters.
The two great things about this film are that incredible sense of place into which we are *immediately* dropped, and the continual dramatic tension the film delivers. There is hardly a frame in this film which fails to hold our attention and create dramatic tension. Caryl disagreed with this opinion somewhat, calling the opening scenes “tedious.” The Film Snob, OTOH, reports being pulled in deeply and immediately.
Our story? In days preceding Christmas, our protagonist Eddy (played Brilliantly by Melissa Leo) discovers that her husband has run off — probably to Atlantic City — to satisfy his gambling addiction with their nest egg that was the down payment for their new double-wide mobile home.
Their car has been left outside the bingo parlour at the bus stop on the Mohawk Indian reservation.
Eddy finds it there, keys still in it. She is wondering what to do next when Lila, our other protagonist comes out of the parlour, and drives off in the car.
Eddy follows Lila to the 20-foot trailer in which Lila lives. Eddy wins her car back by threatening to shoot Lila with a handgun. “I thought it was abandoned,” Lila explains.
When Eddy returns again, to try to tow the car home, Lila and Eddy start talking. Two people from totally different cultures, they begin to find things that bond them together.
One of those bonds is the need for Hard Cash. It turns out that Lila needs a car in order to transport illegal aliens across the frozen St. Lawrence River into the USA.
Eddy has that car…and the two begin working together.
Misty Upham is very effective as the stoic Mohawk Indian woman living on the reservation. She is street-smart in this winter wilderness and shows Eddy how to get the done job.
Eddy considers the transport job to be illegal. Under Lila’s laws, however, it is not illegal but only dangerous because of Border Guards.
Things go well for a while in the transport business although the dramatic tension is always there. Every time, for instance, the car goes out on the frozen river, we expect it to fall through the ice.
The two women also face down several unsavory characters who are involved in this transport business. Eddy’s handgun is of great help in this context.
The two women trying to “make it” while living in the underbelly of the American way of life, learning to understand each other’s culture, and discovering that their family values are more important than their cultural difference all interact to make for a moving film that is impossible to keep from watching.
A side-bar to the film? One of The Film Snob’s American Indian friends had just informed him that the Lokata Nation has seceded from the United States of America and formed their own country through which outsiders cannot now travel without a passport. The Film Snob was fascinated by this story, and will investigate it further. Meanwhile, it had great impact for him while hearing Lila speak of “Mohawk Reservation law” as opposed “United States Law.”
Do not miss seeing “Frozen River.” It’s a riveting, entertaining, informational, and inspiring film— and what more could you *want* from a film?!??
(1 hr 37. Rated “R” in the USA for some language. In English, and some little French with English subtitles in the USA. With Melissa Leo as Eddy, Misty Upham as Lila, Michael O’Keefe as Trooper Finnerty, Mark Boone Junior as Jacques Bruno, Charlie McDermott as T.J., James Reilly as Ricky, Dylan Carusona as Jimmy, Jay Klaitz as Guy Versailles, Michael Sky as Billy Three Rivers, John Canoe as Bernie Littlewolf, Nancy Wu as Chen Li, a Chinese Girl, Rajesh Bose as the Pakistani Father, Joey Chanlin as the Chinese Trafficker, Thahnhahténhtha Gilbert as Little Jake, Adam Lukens as Mitch, Betty Ouyang as Li Wei, a Chinese Girl, and Gargi Shinde as the Pakistani Mother.)