Review of The Ice Harvest (2005) by Brandon L — 23 Jun 2007

Christmas Eve in Wichita; rain, sleet and ice. Vic, a pornographer, and Charlie, a shady attorney, have stolen two million dollars from their mob boss, and they need to appear calm for a few hours until their planned early morning departure.

Vic, who's storing the money, is cool, but Charlie is nervous, especially when their boss's enforcer shows up looking for him. As the night drags on, Charlie does a favour for Renata, the lovely manager of one of the strip clubs, rescues his ex-wife's husband from a drunken public display, drops in on his ex-in-laws, sees his kids, and, between phone calls and visits to Renata, goes looking for Vic.

Charlie's troubles are just beginning....

In a very different direction for ramis, what we have here is a film-noir like movie, which despite good performances from all concerned, fails to work as either a black comedy, or a thriller.

Cusack as usual is fantastic as Charlie who has all the troubles in the world to deal with on Christmas eve. but the problem is, the audience can pretty much work out what is going on from the very upstart due to Connie Nielsons unconvincing performance, she has guilt written all over her face from the very moment we see her (though this could have been Ramis' intention).

Thornton is good in his role, but is hardly in the movie, and supporting characters such as Platt and Quaid, are not used to good effect. but the cmerawork is marvellous and some of the dialogue is very witty, but on the other side of the spectrum, some of the dialogue is very poor and predictable. the big problem though is that there is not one single character that you feel sympathy for and for a film like this, there is a little too much flesh and profanity that sits uncomfortably in the film.

Disappointing.