Strong themes
Director: Courtney Hunt
Featuring: Melissa Chessington Leo, Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael
O’Keefe, Mark Boone, Mark Boone Junior
Running time: 97 minutes
The unusual setting — communities on both sides of the St Lawrence River, which divides the US from Canada — plays a crucial role in this downbeat drama, but cinematographer Reed Morano, shooting on digital video, chooses not to beautify it. On the contrary, the grainy, occasionally shaky, camera work will, for some, detract from the film’s overall achievement.
Ray is a white woman married to a Mohawk, a gambling addict who walked out on his family a few days before Christmas. He’s probably taken the bus to Atlantic City to try his luck in the casinos there. She and her two boys live in a tiny trailer dominated by a big-screen TV and their deposit on a larger mobile home is at risk if Ray’s debts aren’t quickly paid.
Ray meets Lila, a Mohawk estranged from her tribe, over an argument concerning Ray’s husband’s abandoned car, and this chance encounter leads to the pair taking part in the well-paid but hazardous crime of people-smuggling: at considerable risk, they drive across the frozen river into Quebec to pick up refugees, usually Chinese, who are
hidden in the boot of the car as they return across the river into New York State.
On one occasion, when the illegals are a couple from Pakistan, Ray — conscious, no doubt, of the war on terror — dumps a suspicious-looking backpack in the snow, with near-disastrous results.
The film’s strength lies in the utter realism and the lack of sentimentality with which the characters and situations are presented, but it runs the risk of being so uncompromising that potential audiences will avoid it, which would be a pity.
Source: David Stratton The Australian
Compiled by Peter Gillard