Stoical prole sob story has some fresh ground to go over — the smuggling of illegal aliens through the slushy snow of the Mohawk Indian reservation on the Canadian border — and some stark scenery to go with it. Writer and director Courtney Hunt, whose plotting and pacing are sloggingly pedestrian, expends a lot of energy explaining how a law-abiding white woman could get caught up in that sideline: a gambling-addicted husband who skips out on Christmas week, a fifteen-year-old son eager to drop out of school and go to work, nothing to put under the tree for the five-year-old, a dead-end job at Yankee Dollar, bills due. Melissa Leo, aging in a characterful way, able to assume the lead role without a Charlize Theron reverse makeover, does a solid professional job, so much so as to highlight the amateurism around her. Misty Upham, Charlie McDermott, Michael O’Keefe. (2008) — Duncan Shepherd
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