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Frozen River (2008)
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Reviews Counted:122
Fresh:107
Rotten:15
Average Rating:7.3/10
Consensus: Veteran character actress Melissa Leo delivers a stunning performance in this powerful -- if grim -- indie film.
Theatrical Release:Aug 1, 2008 Limited
Box Office: $2,061,019
Synopsis: Courtney Hunt's feature directorial debut FROZEN RIVER is a powerfully unflinching tale of two women, who, driven by economic hardship, form an unlikely partnership smuggling illegal immigrants... Courtney Hunt's feature directorial debut FROZEN RIVER is a powerfully unflinching tale of two women, who, driven by economic hardship, form an unlikely partnership smuggling illegal immigrants across the Canadian border. Melissa Leo turns in a gritty performance as Ray, a struggling dollar-store cashier and mother living in a trailer home in upstate New York who is desperate to make ends meet. When Ray's gambling-addicted husband runs off with the family's payment on a new doublewide trailer, her life quickly spirals into a financial tailspin. During a frenzied search for her deadbeat spouse, she apprehends Lila (Misty Upham), a Mohawk Indian from an area reservation, attempting to steal her car. In the process of taking back her vehicle, she learns of Lila's smuggling operation through an unpatrolled corridor within Mohawk territory--the frozen St. Lawrence River that forms part of the border between the U.S. and Canada. Out of necessity, they form an uneasy alliance: Ray, working to meet the payment's deadline, and Lila, who scrambles to earn money to redeem herself to her estranged in-laws and infant child. Within a stark, mostly minimalist screenplay, Hunt seamlessly works in contemporary anxieties: economic recession, immigration, and trafficking, but never puts too fine a point on social relevance to the detriment of a compelling storyline. As the plot heats up, the stakes Ray and Lila encounter get higher and the danger, more real. FROZEN RIVER is more than a somber meditation on lives in peril, it's a complex portrait of women from different walks of life struggling to find their ethical bearings in a harsh, unforgiving, and corrupt world. [More]
Starring: Melissa Chessington Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael O'Keefe
Starring: Melissa Chessington Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael O'Keefe, Mark Boone, Mark Boone Junior
Director: Courtney Hunt
Director: Courtney Hunt
Screenwriter: Courtney Hunt
Producer: Heather Rae, Chip Hourihan
Composer: Peter Golub, Shahad Ismaily
Studio: Sony Pictures Classics
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Release:
Feb 10, 2009
Reviews for Frozen River
Hunt's weakness for contrivance and underlined points threaten to elbow out her sensitivity
Courtney Hunt's low-budget blue-collar thriller, Frozen River, is one of the most impressive feature debuts of the past several years.
Actress Melissa Leo rightly earned an Oscar nomination for her part in this downbeat drama.
Frozen River is a taut, suspenseful thriller; a troubling of borders both cultural and national; and testament to the virtues of communion, empathy and compassion.
Original, sad, suspenseful and involving: the kind of work that helps independent American cinema retain its good name.
Occasionally marred by contrivance and a crude internal logic that doesn’t bear close scrutiny, ‘Frozen River’ works best as a knuckle-gnawing, blue-collar genre thriller.
Leo and Upham give performances of great conviction and the film is bold and uncliched: especially the matter-of-fact treatment of guns.
It’s Leo, with her pained and battered magnetism - half-pleading, half screw-you - who shakes the film out of its occasional glibness, notching up the performance of her career in thrilling, hungry style.
Everything about the film looks and feels authentic, from the desolate landscape dotted with trailers and fast-food joints to the people who populate a borderland that offers none of them much hope.
Cold yet never calculating, it's a fine film featuring a heart-rendingly knockout performance of steel and strength from Leo.
Leo and Upham make an unlikely double act in a finely written, well-played film with a striking plot and setting. Hunt’s clearly a name to watch; Leo, meanwhile, can look forward to finally getting the recognition, and roles, she deserves.
As a quiet celebration of ordinary women's resourcefulness, the film is well-crafted, sensitively acted and modestly affecting.
While there is much to admire, there is little to enjoy as downtrodden folk try to make money the hard way. At heart it is a sentimental drama that rarely connects.
Early scenes have a raddled power. Later ones slip into a Chistmastide slush of contrivance and redemption.
Frozen River represents one of the best examples of the new trend for austerity and social realism in American indie cinema.
This feels like a story destined to end in tragedy but although there are plenty of opportunities to transform this into a heartbreaker, writer/director Courtney Hunt allows the audience a ray of hope.
Latest News for Frozen River
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February 09, 2009:
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February 08, 2009:
Hunt has achieved a remarkable work with Frozen River, that is both a poignant and exquisitely life-affirming sisterhood rite of passage, and a rare glimpse into the overwhelmed but enduring spirit of the Mohawk Nation. ![]()
More...
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