Hard living in the reservation, becomes even more ungiving against the bitter cold and frozen north. While this film succeeds in painting that lifeless landscape, the people are as unsympathetic toward each other as well. Ray is hard-edged as a 50 something white woman whose no-good gambling husband finally left for good, leaving her, a small child and an angry 15 year old teen. More than her match is Lila, who wore the same dour expression throughout the movie. No one seems to like each other. Ok I get that, life is hard on the reservation. But these people dont seem to be helping themselves either. The biggest complaint comes when Ray (Melissa Leo) is caught smuggling two chinese women, asks the cop, who was the most sympathetic voice in this whole ordeal, how long would she be locked up. "Four years", he says, "unless you are on a watch list". She was relieved. Only 4 years ? Thats easy money for taking a small risk - it should be 10 years and $100,000 fine. This is hardly a deterrent. The director and writer seem single-focused on just one thing. That to portray poverty and hopelessness. But hardly offers a solution.

Melissa Leo first came to my attention when I saw "The Fighter". She won an Academy Award for her role as the hardened mother, the type who makes you feel as if you're walking on eggshells (she let slip a curse word during her acceptance speech).Two years earlier Leo had played a lead role in "Frozen River". She plays Ray, a woman working a minimum wage job and living in a double-wide mobile home. When her husband disappears with the family's money, Ray joins up with Lila (Misty Upham), a Mohawk woman, and they start transporting illegal immigrants across the US-Canada border.Almost every scene in this movie tenses the viewer up. Whether it's the claustrophobic settings or the risks of something happening during the transports, the movie pulls no punches in its focus on the marginalized sectors of society. The snow and ice emphasize the desperation that drives these women to start breaking the law. I recommend it, as I do every movie in which I've seen Melissa Leo. Too bad about Misty Upham's untimely death in 2014.

Small-scale social drama that's never quite as honestly touching as it's ought to be, but still succeeds to be a solid and watchable indie product.The directing and some of the acting have a slight air of amateurishness to them, though some performances are great, and the screenplay is also rough around the edges, indeed.But the interesting setting and some of the ways the plot's handled are satisfactory as well as the pic's calm and gentle pay-off.And it's good to see socially aware American cinema for a change.6 out of 10 babies on ice

You like Mohawks, white trailer trash but both with a big heart? What writing!!! What understated, realistic acting! the cinematography of some frozen river in Plattsburgh, NY in the polar cold of winter is outstanding. And you really feel it. Course we're in the Blizzard of 2010 right now in Boston so it fits right in.The casual use of a gun is unsettling but this heroine is not blessed with a Ph.D. in anything. She just loves her sons and has been deserted by her gambling-aholic husband. She is just trying to get by and uses the gun only for 'emphasis' Fascinating to see that larceny is featured throughout this movie, but is more mean and ugly when it is legal. The double-wide trailer salesman who casually takes her $3000, has her sign a paper and doesn't even give her a copy. YOu know she will never see that trailer, as he will have 'no proof' that she has given him this CASH. The mother-in-law of the Mohawk woman who steals her grandbaby from the hospital. "The tribal elders don't get involved in this." She is smuggling to get money for support of the child, which she leaves at night looking in the window at her baby. The lying duplicity of the Yankee Dollar manager who has stringing Ray along for 2 years, promising to bring her on full time.....all legal. No benefits, rotten pay.The movie benefits from the fact that they had no money, so the weather man is the actual weatherman in Plattsburg, NY. The trailer salesmen were afraid they would 'ruin their image'????? Yet this was the big dream of this woman, not something she was forced into living in.And who didn't get this Christmas time movie's metaphor of the immigrant baby, who they leave by the side of the ice because the car is too heavy. The immigrant parents are in the trunk so they don't know until they let them out at the motel. The Pakistani manager interprets, "Her baby was in that satchel." These smugglers drive all the way back onto the ice and find the baby 'frozen dead'. The baby-less Mohawk woman doesn't want to hold her to her warm body because 'the baby's dead', but does. By the time they get back to the motel, she reports, "The baby's moving." So they give a live baby back to the illegal immigrant who collapses with relief. Christ child, anyone? A unique movie, you won't forget it. Parts will come back to haunt you, like the chance the white woman has to escape back to her children, knowing the Mohawk will be expelled from the Mohawk nation if she and the immigrants are not turned over to the New York state police. She doesn't take it and decides to go to jail. Contrary to stereotype, the trooper tells her she will serve 4 months ("if you're not on the black list"). See it.