So skillfully does Hunt paint her characters in the first two-thirds of her film that I probably could have done without some of the thriller elements towards the end. There are obviously some potentially fateful consequences for what the women do but the final developments and confrontations do feel stacked up and a bit too plot-heavy. Even as a thriller, however, the film avoids cheapening its story with unnecessary violence and, though a gun is fired on occasion, it is filmed in such a de-emphasizing way that sometimes only lets us just hear the shot rather than see a close-up of the gun itself.
Despite the almost complete lack of actual on-screen violence (and the film’s R rating for just a handful of curse words is really ridiculous), most people would probably compare the film to other movies about people making bad decisions such as Fargo and A Simple Plan. What sets Frozen River apart is how, in both its characters and tone, there is not a shred of strangeness or absurdity in its scenario, as what drives these people to criminal behavior is not greed or malevolence but simply survival. And as the movie reaches its quietly sad conclusion, we can only think back on that opening shot whose resonance only deepens to allow us to finally imagine our own closing image of Leo’s character.
Bottom line: Pretty close to brilliance.
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