The Ice Harvest

What is it with Billy Bob Thornton and Christmas Eve robberies? This is the second film in which he plays a dirtbag plotting the Crime of a Lifetime on the night before Christmas, after Bad Santa. Now, that was a film that understood dark comedy. Terry Zwigoff's spectacularly crude Ode to Degeneracy had balls - it stared unafraid deep into the soul of a tortured, middle-aged hopeless alcoholic.

Harold Ramis' new pitch black semi-comedy, The Ice Harvest, doesn't have nearly the bite of Thornton's previous entry in the Noel Caper genre. Sure, its heroes commit all kinds of dastardly deeds - and on Christmas! - but they're basically nice people caught in a crazy, intense situation. Though they act bad, they themselves are mere ciphers...stand-ins for actual characters whom Ramis and screenwriters Richard Russo and Robert Benton shuffle about for yucks.

The film's not bad, per se. At least, not as bad as I had heard, or as that last paragraph might have you think. Stars John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton have a good rapport, even if their scenes together (or any other scenes, for that matter) aren't exactly funny. And the film does manage some last-minute surprises, both in terms of the story's conclusion and the graphic nature of the violence. It's just that, though Ramis seems to feel that he's reinventing the wheel with this rather simple "robbery gone wrong" story, it's only a passable slapstick crime film.



And, yes, slapstick will be the order of the day, despite the fact that neither of these two guys are particularly known for pratfalls. (Though I guess Thornton has, at this point, proven himself an able physical comedian). The movie doesn't really even try to snappy, funny dialogue for the most part, and most of the characters are completely stock and uninteresting. I mean, this is a movie about poirnographers and organized crime bosses in Wichita, Kansas. You're telling me, in real life, those aren't some interesting characters?

Cusack plays mob lawyer Charlie Arglist, who seeems like a genuinely nice guy despite his choice of profession. But don't let appearances fool you - he and local smut peddler Vic Cavanaugh have secretly stolen $2 million of mob boss Bill Guerrard's money. Guerrard, by the way, is played by Randy Quaid, who between this and Brokeback Mountain appears to be suddenly in movies again. Did he get a new agent or something?

Anyway, the entire film takes place on Christmas Eve, immediately following Charlie and Vic's heist but before they can get out of town, to the airport and off to some country where they don't allow rain, by law. Predictably, a variety of things go wrong. A long-time crush of Charlie's, lovely strip club owner Renata (Connie Neilsen) has caught on to their plan. Some hoodlum (Mike Starr) is showing up all over town asking about them. And Charlie somehow finds himself stuck caring for the drunken oaf (Oliver Platt) who married his lovely ex-wife.

The scenes with Platt are pretty awful. When he's first introduced about 10 minutes into the movie, he's already drunk, and since the movie takes place all on this one night, he only gets more drunk from there. It must be hard to get into the head of a character who's making a drunk ass of himself in the entire script, and Platt, to his credit I suppose, doesn't even try. Pete has no personality beyond being shitfaced, which makes spending an entire film with him fairly unpleasant.

The sequences with Charlie and Vic evading the mob and questioning one another's motives are the best in the film, but it can't keep up the pace for very long. Eventually, they manage to lock a nemesis in a large suitcase, only to find that he can still argue with them, and still has a handgun. It works okay for a while, but builds to a climax at about the hour mark that I didn't really like. It makes logical sense, in terms of the story, but takes everything in pretty much the least interesting or funny direction possible. The entire film then quickly runs out of steam, gunplay notwithstanding.

I'm not really sure what happened here, exactly. The set-up has worked before (in films like The Ref and Quick Change, which also feature frenzied robbers escaping the scene of the crime). And the actors are all good, even Oliver Platt, who is funny but never seems to appear in funny movies. The movie just never made me laugh. I think, with this sort of outrageous, farcical material, it either works or it doesn't. I also think, however, that more attention to character and less film noir-style double-crosses would have given the jokes more punch and made the entire enterprise more amusing. Also, less shots of people slipping on ice. Once is kind of funny. Twice is not funny. Three times is not funny. Four times is kind of funny again. Anything beyond that is not funny at all.