The earnest
Sundance-winning drama Frozen River is one of those movies where a giant, invisible
boot seems to be hovering over the characters' heads, just waiting for the
right moment to squash them. Until it does, they have to scrape and claw in
dangerous circumstances, and the audience can only sit there wincing,
powerless, while anticipating the inevitable. It helps that the lead squashee is
played by Melissa Leo, a first-rate character actress who's best known for her
turn as detective Kay Howard on the groundbreaking NBC show Homicide: Life
On The Streets,
and who also quietly out-acted the likes of Sean Penn, Naomi Watts, and Benicio
Del Toro in 21 Grams. After 20 years of disappearing into roles, Leo finally gets
the spotlight she's long deserved in Frozen River, but she plays it just as
she would a bit part—subtly, precisely, and never reaching for more
theatrics than necessary.
With nicotine stains on
her fingers, Leo plays the single mother of two boys, a surly teenager (Charles
McDermott) and a moony-eyed youngster (James Reilly), all living in a crumbling
trailer in upstate New York. When the boys' gambling-addicted father runs off
with what little money the family has, Leo's job as a sales clerk at a local
dollar store isn't enough to keep a rent-to-own TV in the house, much less pay
for a coveted double-wide. So Leo teams up with another poor single mother,
played by Misty Upham, who's involved in an operation to transport immigrants
across the frozen St. Lawrence River from Canada to the U.S. Though Upham lives
on a Mohawk reservation, which operates by different laws, it's still a very
dangerous proposition for both women.
In many respects, Frozen
River
feels like a prototypical Sundance winner: It's plaintive and minor, small in
scale and technical ambition, and concerned with issues affecting working
mothers, the poor, Native Americans, and immigrants. What lends it distinction,
if only mildly, are the engrossing particulars of the setting, with its
uncommon glimpse into tribal law and reservation life, and Leo's performance,
which brings overdue attention to a career spent laboring under the radar. If
the role brings her more recognition and work, all the better, but Leo
certainly isn't lobbying for it. She doesn't show off. She just does what she's
always done: Reveals a character for who she is, nothing more, nothing less.