Frozen River (2008)

This is another gritty drama of a desperate person.
Ray Eddy (her name is only said once in the film and I didn't know what it was until I saw her name tag when she was working) is a struggling single mother whose gamble-addict husband ran off with the needed money to buy a bigger trailer home. Ray (Melissa Leo) has spent the last two years of her life working at a dollar store, underappreciated and underpaid. She needs some money and fast. Then she stumbles upon something dangerous and illegal but it pays well. She teams up (I use that term loosely as she is held at gun point, with her own gun to drive across the frozen river of the title) with a Mohawk Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham) who is known for smuggling illegal immigrants over the unguarded border on the Mohawk reservation. She reluctantly agrees. It is a dangerous job and nearly costs the life of an Pakistani infant who was placed in a duffel bag. Ray didn't want them to bring in anything that could be used to make bombs, luckily, in a brief moment of something positive, the baby survives the bitter, freezing cold of upper New York.
Meanwhile, at Ray's home, her oldest son, T.J. (Charlie McDermott), who has too much responsibility for a fifteen-year-old, nearly burns the house down because the water pipes froze over and to remedy the problem, he uses a blow torch like an idiot, this nearly causes the house to burn down. Ray is furious at him. In addition to this, T.J. also is scamming elderly Mohawks out of money, so he is not a good character. But he  is the one who remembers to ask his 'friend' and business partner to obtain a gift for his younger brother, Ricky (James Reilly), age five, for Christmas.
Lila, in the meantime, misses her infant son, who was taken by her mother-in-law from the hospital. Ray tells her to call the cops, but Lila says that tribal police don't interfere with those matters.
Ray is only one smuggle away from being able to afford her dream home, but something goes terribly wrong. At first, she decides to let Lila take the fall because her boys need her but then she changes her mind. In the end, Ray goes to jail while Lila snatches her son back from her mother-in-law (her husband died before the movie began) and returns home to the Eddy sons. Life will never be the same but it will continue. T.J. is even made to apologize for scamming the elderly woman, though he fails to look that sorry to me. The boys will never be normal again and Ray won't be either.
The topic is grim, but Ray is completely desperate and the money is too good to pass up. Melissa Leo is brilliant as Ray, though she looks much too old for have a son who is only five. She fully deserved her Oscar nomination, every emotion is written on her face. She is cautious around the state trooper (Michael O'Keefe) but can still lie to save her butt when push comes to shove. Misty Upham is also great in a simpler role. Charlie McDermott, best known as Axl from The Middle, one of my favorite TV shows, is nearly unrecognizable as Troy Jr, looking poor and unkempt, just as the role would require as Ray can barely afford food for her children. At the beginning of the film, there is only popcorn and Tang in the house.
The lighting is also grim and realistic, when Ray runs out into the woods at the end, you can barely see her as there is no natural light to be found. The film is little, but real and for some, probably too close to home for comfort. It is also nice to see women in the lead roles as not enough films in Hollywood offer good lead roles to women, fortunately this is an exception. Grade: A