Writer/director Courtney Hunt's snowbound drama is set in the wastelands of upstate New York, where Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo) struggles to raise her kids and pay the bills after her gambling husband scarpers with the family's savings. Her salvation comes in the terse, mistrusting shape of Lila Littlewolf (Misty Upham), a native American Mohawk from the local reservation who ropes Ray into helping her smuggle illegal immigrants from Canada over the frozen Saint Lawrence River. It's a surprisingly easy way to make fast money, though fraught with obvious dangers - crossing the river's thin ice becomes an effective metaphor for the trouble that lies ahead. Part trailer-trash domestic drama, part tense thriller, this gripping film features a fabulously sinewy performance from Leo, who's brilliant as the struggling mother, her weathered features hard and determined after a lifetime of minimum-wage toil.