Frozen River ***

2008 - Seen in Theater
Written and directed by Courtney Hunt
With Melissa Leo, Misty Upham, Charlei McDermott, Michael O'Keefe and Mark Boone Jr.

The working poor - When your American dream is simply to own a larger double wide trailer home to replace your smaller beat-up trailer home. This dream is the driving force of the narrative. This film is about a single working poor mother and her desperate attempts to scratch out a living. She resorts to some questionable moral activities to make that living. She recruits the help of a young Native American woman with a sordid past and experience to smuggle illegal immigrants into the country. To do this smuggling, they must drive across the frozen St Lawrence River, with the danger of falling through the ice always imminent.

One interesting aspect of the film is the people who they are smuggling across. Ray, the lead character of the film, discovers that the people who she is smuggling are indebted to the smugglers, who appear to be Russain mafia, who pay for their passage. It's not clear what will happen, but it certainly can be assumed that they will be serving their debts in some way Ray and her companion don't want to consider. One group is a group of young Asian women, who will certainly be used as sex slaves. But Ray and her partner are only concerned with their own small part in all this and generally don't worry about what will happen, though you can see by their expressions that it feels a little unsavory to them.

Ray is a woman who the audience roots for, but as described above, her moral compass is not always set on the straight and narrow. Her prejudice shows when she tries to smuggle across a Pakistan couple and she throws their bag out thinking that it is a terrorist bomb. It ends up being the couple's baby. She is a protagonist who is human.

The movie is bleak, but I find a glimmer of hope. While Ray does go to jail, other characters are taught a lesson and with the money she earns she gets her trailer. She has forged some friendships and has constructed a small family of outcasts which will provide for a slightly rosier future.