The movie opens on a cold winter day—a few days before Christmas. We first see the face of a crying woman, Ray Eddy (Melissa Leo), smoking a cigarette; her teeth are cigarette-stained and her faces is ruddy, almost malnourished. Ray is sitting on the front step of her single-wide trailer. One gets the impression that she is living from day to day. Ray is crying because her husband has just taken off with the all of the money that they had saved for a major payment on a double-wide trailer. He is a compulsive gambler and has taken off in one of their two old cars, leaving her and her two sons without any money.
It soon becomes clear that this is not the first time he has done this and that neither she nor her 15-year-old son, T.J. (Charlie DcDermott), expects him to come back. Yet, she goes to the Bingo parlor in the nearby Mohawk reservation (between New York State and Quebec) to try to find him. With barely enough money to buy gas (and without the $5 entrance fee needed to get into the bingo place), she begs the woman taking the admission fee to let her go into the place to just look for her husband. She is not admitted. When she comes back to her car, she sees a young Indian woman, Lila (Misty Upham) driving off in her husband's car (which had been left abandoned with the keys in the seat).
Ray follows Lila to her small trailer to get her car back. As Ray retrieves her car, Lila tells her that she has a friend who will pay $2,000 for it (more than it is worth---and without papers). Why? He is a smuggler who is always looking for cars with pop up trunks. Ray agrees to have Lila show her to the buyer, while showing Lila her gun and telling her that she is not afraid to use it if she has to.
To get to the car dealer, they have to cross a wide frozen river (the St. Lawrence?—the St. Regis?) that divides the Mohawk reservation and serves as the border between Canada and the US. When they reach Lila's friend on the other side of the international border, he gives them $1,200 as two people are being into the trunk to be taken to the US. Thus begins the reluctant smuggling relationship between Ray and Lila with Lila supplying the contacts and Ray supplying the car with the pop trunk--as well as the fact that Ray is 'white' and police won't suspect her of smuggling across people the border. Lila and Ray make several smuggling 'runs,' with no two coming off the same. However, when the arrangement goes wrong, the consequences affect both women and families in an unexpected way.
The story and characters are well-developed in this screenplay (written and directed by Courtney Hunt), and Melissa Leo's acting is well worth her Oscar nomination. Leo would eventually win an Oscar for her role in The Fighter (2011).
It soon becomes clear that this is not the first time he has done this and that neither she nor her 15-year-old son, T.J. (Charlie DcDermott), expects him to come back. Yet, she goes to the Bingo parlor in the nearby Mohawk reservation (between New York State and Quebec) to try to find him. With barely enough money to buy gas (and without the $5 entrance fee needed to get into the bingo place), she begs the woman taking the admission fee to let her go into the place to just look for her husband. She is not admitted. When she comes back to her car, she sees a young Indian woman, Lila (Misty Upham) driving off in her husband's car (which had been left abandoned with the keys in the seat).
Ray follows Lila to her small trailer to get her car back. As Ray retrieves her car, Lila tells her that she has a friend who will pay $2,000 for it (more than it is worth---and without papers). Why? He is a smuggler who is always looking for cars with pop up trunks. Ray agrees to have Lila show her to the buyer, while showing Lila her gun and telling her that she is not afraid to use it if she has to.
To get to the car dealer, they have to cross a wide frozen river (the St. Lawrence?—the St. Regis?) that divides the Mohawk reservation and serves as the border between Canada and the US. When they reach Lila's friend on the other side of the international border, he gives them $1,200 as two people are being into the trunk to be taken to the US. Thus begins the reluctant smuggling relationship between Ray and Lila with Lila supplying the contacts and Ray supplying the car with the pop trunk--as well as the fact that Ray is 'white' and police won't suspect her of smuggling across people the border. Lila and Ray make several smuggling 'runs,' with no two coming off the same. However, when the arrangement goes wrong, the consequences affect both women and families in an unexpected way.
The story and characters are well-developed in this screenplay (written and directed by Courtney Hunt), and Melissa Leo's acting is well worth her Oscar nomination. Leo would eventually win an Oscar for her role in The Fighter (2011).