MOVIE REVIEW ; `River’ is Edgy but Grim

By JAMES VERNIERE

“FROZEN RIVER”

Rated R. At Kendall, Coolidge Corner and West Newton cinemas.

Grade: B-

Even the snow is depressing in “Frozen River,” the latest feel- bad indie film attracting critical praise from the icy depths of blue-collar, working-class bummer-hood.

For arthouse patrons, these fictional plunges into the heart of hick darkness are a strange type of vicarious delight. Will you have arsenic with your buttered gourmet popcorn?

Written and directed by Memphis-born, Columbia-and-Sarah- Lawrence-educated Courtney Hunt, the film works best when it focuses on the daily lives of hard-pressed Ray Eddy (a terrific Melissa Leo) and her sons. Ray’s reformed gambling addict husband has relapsed, abandoning her and the kids in the northern stretches of New York state along the Canadian border, leaving them to fend for themselves in a rundown trailer.

Ray’s sad dream is to cobble together enough money to purchase a new double-wide trailer. But her less-than-full-time job at a nearby Yankee Dollar, where her promised promotion and pay raise is two years overdue, doesn’t help, and she and her sons are subsisting on unhappy meals of Tang and popcorn.

Into Ray’s life walks Lila (Montana-born Misty Upham), a single mother and Mohawk, whose newborn has been hijacked by the father’s family. Lila squats in a tiny trailer in the woods in Canada’s Mohawk Nation. She and Ray form an unlikely alliance driving across the frozen St. Lawrence River to smuggle illegals from China and the Middle East into the United States in the trunk of a Dodge Spirit for cash.

Ray is a denim-clad loser-turned-backwoods-Warrior-Princess with chipped fingernails, a rat’s nest of reddish hair, tattoos bespeaking a wild youth and the wiry physique of a born worrier, plus she’s not afraid to use the heat she’s packing.

Her sons, 15-year-old T.J. (Charlie McDermott) and 5-year-old Ricky (James Reilly) stand by her, but they’re worried about losing their “rent-to-own” widescreen TV to the repo man.

As they approach Christmas Eve with little to no chance of presents under the tree, “Frozen River” suggests a fable titled “It’s a Miserable Life.” But Leo keeps it on track and compelling, however sentimental and implausible the twists.

Leo, who came to the attention of many as a regular on TV’s “Homicide: Life on the Street,” is known for the raw intensity she brings to her character studies. I’d love to see her Lady Macbeth. Then again, I’d love to see her take a break from dark, weighty roles and cut loose in a comedy.

Upham’s sleepy, affectless delivery, on the other hand, is a drawback. In the third-billed role of State Trooper Finnerty, hardworking veteran Michael O’Keefe (“Caddyshack,” etc.) gets surprisingly short shrift. A bit of blue-collar romance might have gladdened the heart of this dark and chilly “River.”

– jverniere@bostonherald.com

(“Frozen River” contains profanity and a child in peril.)

Originally published by By JAMES VERNIERE.

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