Remember, always turn into the skid.
In amidst the pre-holiday movie bombast you sometimes can find one or two little Hollywood rarities tucked away beneath the wizards and elves and talking toy astronauts-although to be perfectly honest,
The Ice Harvest
might not be a rarity so much as an anomaly. The film itself doesn't seem to know quite what it is-only that it is, in the words of David Letterman, definitely something.
John Cusack plays Charlie, a genial but flagrantly crooked attorney who has the Wichita police force in his pocket and an unsavory clientele of the organized crime variety. His wife has left him and his son despises him. "Ho fucking ho," Charlie says bitterly at the film's opening, and we can see why his holiday joviality might leave something to be desired. But thanks to a particularly sleazy client, pornography distributor Vic (Billy Bob Thornton), things might be looking up for Charlie; he and Vic have managed to skim off $2 million plus change from their mobster boss, and on Christmas morning the two plan to part ways and skip town.
***image2***Now, those of you who left the movie theater on Saturday night to find your car blanketed with half a foot of wet snow will understand one reason why their plan suddenly has been frustrated:
Ice, ice, baby, with the verglacé of the title accumulating rapidly and the roads with every scene becoming darker and slicker and more treacherous as cars spin out, people fall down and matters which would have been simple, like, say, depositing a dead body into a lake, become agonizingly difficult. To complicate matters, the boss (an unrecognizably thuggish Randy Quaid) is coming after them; Charlie still hasn't bought presents for his kids; Charlie's inamorata, classy strip-club owner Renata (Connie Nielsen, here doing a broad parody of the noir femme fatale) seems determined to find out what's going on; Vic's hidden the cash without telling Charlie where; and perhaps worst of all, Charlie's friend Pete (Oliver Platt), having partaken freely of the festive seasonal spirits, has latched onto him with all the rosy-cheeked doggedness of the totally plastered.
***image1***Bravo to Focus Features for once again taking on something essentially unmarketable and letting it be…whatever the heck it is. No one can make spineless and amoral more adorable than John Cusack, and one wonders why he persists in making appalling romantic comedies when he never really fit that mold anyway. Then, Oliver Platt is brilliantly cast; the film truly suffers when he's not onscreen.
Not for the easily offended or the squeamish, The Ice Harvest has no good guys, alternating blackest depravity with curiously heartfelt touches-a strange combo for the holidays, perhaps; but then some of us don't want to eat the same dang Chex Mix all month long.
