Frozen River R

Frozen River
112K ratings
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Format:  DVD
item number:  QH65
on most orders of $75+
Brand New
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DVD Details

  • Rated: R
  • Closed captioning available
  • Run Time: 1 hours, 33 minutes
  • Video: Color
  • Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
  • Released: February 10, 2009
  • Originally Released: 2008
  • Label: Sony Pictures

Performers, Cast and Crew:

Starring &
Performer: &
Directed by
Screenwriting by
Composition by &
Produced by &
Director of Photography:
Executive Production by &

Entertainment Reviews:

Certified Fresh88%

TOMATOMETER
Total Count: 135

Upright74%

AUDIENCE SCORE
User Ratings: 85,867
Rating: 3/5 -- 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. Full Review
Daily Telegraph (UK)
Jul 17, 2009
A Sundance hit that is both absorbing and bleak, FROZEN RIVER is anchored by powerful performances, believable scenarios and excellent writing.
USA Today
Aug 4, 2008
Rating: 5/5 -- Focused, poignant and expertly-crafted, Frozen River asks a great deal of an audience used to tales of triumph against all the odds and happy endings but it's about as rewarding a viewing experience as you're likely to find. Full Review
Roll Credits
Oct 30, 2019
Rating: 4/5 -- 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. Full Review
Time Out
Jul 17, 2009
Rating: B+ -- ... I thought the performances were good, but I just thought it could have done more. Full Review
Reel Talk Online
Sep 12, 2017
In FROZEN RIVER, Leo's acting has a brittle severity and power. Every moment of her performance feels torn from experience, and so does the movie, which finds a suspense in broken lives that are hanging in the balance. -- Grade: A-
Entertainment Weekly
Aug 8, 2008
This intense indie drama of unlikely female partners involved in a smuggling operation on the Canadian border is a bracing character study.
Los Angeles Times
Aug 1, 2008

Product Description:

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.

Description by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment:

Strapped for money and having been deserted by her husband, working class Ray (Melissa Leo), reluctantly teams up with Lila (Misty Upham), a widowed Mohawk Indian, to smuggle illegal immigrants across the frozen St. Lawrence River from Canada to the U.S. in the trunk of a Dodge Spirit. Both women swear each trip will be their last, but one final run across the river leads to a showdown with the law on all sides.

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Product Info

  • UPC: 043396271807
  • Shipping Weight: 0.25/lbs (approx)
  • International Shipping: 1 item

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