You only need to read the title to get a clue about the thrilling atmosphere of the movie. When you walk on frozen water, you can almost hear the terrible sound of cracking ice, even though nothing has happened yet.

You start expecting the worst when you see a woman has decided to resort to human smuggling for the sake of her family. You also stop hoping that the movie will have a lighthearted, entertaining moment.

Then you join Ray Eddy (excellently played by Melissa Leo) in the spiderweb, as she tries to take care of her two sons and get by without her husband, an addict who ran away with the family’s savings.

All that Ray’s husband left behind is his rusty old car, which soon becomes his wife’s last resort to survival. And what can you use a car for, near the Quebec border, other than smuggling immigrants crossing the Canadian border into the USA?

Ray Eddy lives in an old trailer, in the small and isolated town of Massena, and it is clear her low-paid cashier’s job does not help her much when it comes to raising her two kids. She has managed to raise some money to buy a new trailer for her family, but her Mohawk, gambling husband, steals it and runs away and since then Ray becomes truly bitter. Everything connected to her husband infuriates her. And, just as she is searching for him, she’s lucky enough to cross paths Lila, a Mohawk woman working at the gambling club. Ray sees Lila in her husband’s car and stops her with a shot through the door. The awkward relationship between the two women starts when Lila tells Ray she knows someone who wants to buy the car.

Before realizing what is happening, Ray sees herself becoming Lila’s partner in crime, driving her husband’s car across the frozen St. Lawrence river to Mohawk land in Canada. Driven by the thought that her children’s breakfast is composed of popcorn and Tang, desperate Ray is ready to team up with difficult Lila.

Lila Littlewolf ( Misty Upham) is a young woman who is quite estranged from the tribe and occasionally smuggles immigrants through her isolated and unpatrolled reservation, and this is the element that connects the two women.

This relationship between the two opposed women gives the movie its charm. Although this kind of relationship is encountered in many other books or films, what makes this one special is the intensity in it, which causes it to be very dramatic. The two are both very strong, rough and angry women, but with completely different purposes. They seem to have nothing in common and they can’t stand the sight of each other, but, as time passes, similarities between them become more and more clear. And, as it usually happens, proximity unites them. They spend so much time together that they become too familiar with each other.

The film’s story is not so much out of the ordinary, but the two actresses’ performances make it exceptional. They are both believable, authentic and drama, so that one cannot see the film and go home unimpressed.