The Ice Harvest Movie Review:


“Pushing Tin” co-stars John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton re-team for the dark comedy, “The Ice Harvest”.

Cusack plays Charlie Arglist, who is an attorney in Wichita, Kansas and has just embezzled $2 million dollars. Together with his partner, Vic (Billy Bob Thornton), Charlie plans on leaving Wichita forever on Christmas Eve. The only problem is can he get out of Wichita during one of the coldest nights of the year.

Standing in Charlie’s way is the irate Kansas City boss Bill Guerrard (Randy Quaid) whom Charlie stole the money from. Other problems for Charlie is that he is in love with a sexy ice-cold strip-club owner, Renata (Connie Nielsen) and his tormented drinking buddy Pete (Oliver Platt), needs a lift home to Charlie’s ex-wife’s place.

On paper, the talent involved and having a seasoned comedy director like Harold Ramis at the helm, you know this picture looks to be special. Then why is it so horribly rotten?

We have seen so many dark mob comedies in recent years that the plot itself seems contrived. Cusack is out-of-his-mind bored in this picture, Thornton is just waiting to cash his cheque and Randy Quaid screams a little. The only performances I enjoyed was the always drunk Oliver Platt and the steely but sexy Connie Nielsen who were perfectly cast in their roles.

As I sat and watched every shred of dignity evaporate from this train-wreck of a film, I remembered back to 1994 and a little Nicolas Cage comedy called “Trapped in Paradise” which for me was very similar in plot and oozed charm. In that film, three dim-witted brothers are stuck in a small town during the holidays after robbing the town’s bank. The reason that film sang so well is because the characters grew and the plot amplified the characters and the film. It was also quite funny.

In “The Ice Harvest”, the film’s characters never grow as people before one has to die. Then there is the obvious problem that every one in this film is either a sobering imbecile or a blood-thirsty killer. The film is just horrible on so many levels.

When it comes to this film, I can say from the deepest part of my soul that all the funny parts are in the trailer.

So Says the Soothsayer



Dean Kish

This twisty caper comedy has an enjoyably scruffy plot, but the filmmakers get the tone all wrong, missing any sense of irony or black comedy, which leaves it both unfunny and rather gruesome.

Charlie (Cusack) is a mob lawyer who's planned the perfect crime with Wichita lowlife Vic (Thornton), stealing $2.1 million from a local gangster (Quaid) on Christmas Eve. But over the long night, everyone's plans change as Charlie asks a stripper (Nielsen) to run off with him, takes care of a drunken old friend (Platt) who's now married to his ex-wife (Bentley), and tries to both outrun a vicious thug (Starr) and avoid arousing the suspicion of a local cop (Jagodowski).

There's a decent story here about a guy forced to examine his dead-end life, getting entangled in an outrageous caper and finding something new on the other side. But this isn't that film. This is about aggressively unlikeable people doing cruel and downright stupid things at every turn. Director Ramis seems to be aiming for a comical romp, but nothing raises a smile. We can see the jokes falling flat as they emerge; the desperate slapstick is painful to watch.

There's an odd tension between Christmas cheer and the story's darker, more deranged elements. Murder and vice strain against the comedy and even tragedy, never gelling at all (unlike Thornton's other anti-Christmas gem, Bad Santa). There's a clear effort to achieve Hitchcockian suspicion and suspense, but that can't work without a much more sympathetic central character. And the plot is overcomplicated and wordy, throwing around so many names and characters--and multiple names for the characters--that it's not easy to remember what's what and who's who.

At least the cast is good, with Nielsen as the standout with her pulp fiction looks and dangerous attitude. And Quaid's never been this hulkingly menacing. But there's a general feel of laziness about the film, leading up to a series of truly vile confrontation scenes. If they'd gone for a serious thriller or true gallows humour, it could have worked. But this is a mess.

Rich Cline

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