19 Jan 11
Director: Courtney Hunt
USA
2008
97 min
Ray (Melissa Leo) will do anything for her children – even bending the law. Underfed, underpaid and virtually unemployed, we join her as her no-good husband disappears to Atlantic City with the final payment for her dream mobile home. Teetering on a financial precipice, Ray, along with an improbable accomplice in the softly
spoken Mohawk, Lila, becomes embroiled in a people-trafficking scam on a nearby Native American reservation that connects to the Canadian border across a stretch of frozen water. Debut director Hunt manages to wring every last drop of tension from the pair’s foolhardy endeavour while making sure the film doesn’t stray into the clichéd territory of the ‘sisters-doing-it-for-themselves’ parable.