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Mood:
- BleakEmotionalAtmosphericContemplativeThought Provoking
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Plot:
- Single ParentUnlikely criminalsDown on Your LuckCrimesLife is a BitchPartnersSocietyUnlikely Partners more...
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Genres:
- DramaIndependentCrime
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Time/Period:
- Contemporary21st Century
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Place:
- New YorkUSA
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Praise:
- Award WinnerCritically AcclaimedPrestigious AwardsSundance Festival Winner
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Style:
- Strong Female Presence
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Attitudes:
- SeriousRealisticSlow
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Flag:
- Profanity
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Frozen River, 2008
English, French
USA
Profile of Frozen River
The mood of Frozen River is bleak, emotional, and thought provoking. The plot centers around unlikely criminals, being down on your luck, and a single parent. It is a drama, independent, and crime movie. Stylistically, Frozen River stars a strong female character. In approach, it is serious and realistic. The pacing is slow. Frozen River is set in New York. It happens in contemporary times. The movie is known for being a Sundance Festival winner and critically acclaimed. Note that Frozen River includes profanity.
Summary of Frozen River
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.
Details
| Language: | English, French |
| Country: | USA |
| Release date: | 18 January 2008 |
| Runtime: | 97 min |
Cast and Crew
as Ray Eddy
as Lila
Photos
Clips
Critics Reviews
Washington Post
- |
- by: Ann Hornaday
Time
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- by: Richard Schickel
Users Reviews
- 10.January.2011
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- by: Netflowers
- Netflowers rated this movie
0/10
- 30.August.2010
- |
- by: Dain Binder
- Dain Binder rated this movie0/10
