The Ice Harvest
<p>In 1997 I was delighted by <cite>Grosse Point Blank</cite>, John<br />
Cusack&#8217;s masterpiece about a hitman who finds himself (in both senses<br />
of the phrase) at his high-school reunion.  I loved that movie for its<br />
action, its dark comedy, and a script that never stopped being<br />
wickedly intelligent for even a second.  I&#8217;ve been waiting nearly ten<br />
years for Cusack to do a movie as funny and as plain damn<br />
<em>good</em>.</p>
<p><span id="more-226"></span></p>
<p><cite>Ice Harvest</cite> is not quite that movie, but it will do<br />
nicely until one comes along.  Cusack&#8217;s character, Charlie Arglist, is<br />
a mob lawyer who has connived with a co-worker to steal two million<br />
dollars from their boss, the crimelord who owns the underside of<br />
Wichita, Kansas.  As the movie opens it is an icy Christmas Eve; the<br />
two have bagged the money and plan to split for the tropics in the<br />
morning when the roads are passable.  The boss seems blissfully<br />
ignorant that he&#8217;s been ripped off.  All Charlie has to do until the<br />
roads clear is&#8230;act normal.</p>
<p>But it&#8217;s Christmas Eve.  Charlie has a million dollars in the bag.<br />
He&#8217;s about to get out of town, leave behind the tag ends of a messy<br />
divorce and a dead-end life of booze and strip clubs, about to<br />
reinvent himself.  He figures he&#8217;ll spend his last night in Wichita<br />
being nice to his friends.</p>
<p>But for Charlie, nice is not normal.  His belated attempt to behave<br />
like a decent human being combines with his perfect heist in a way<br />
that tangles him up in a web of deceit, betrayals and violence worthy<br />
of a classic noir thriller from the likes of Dashiell Hammett or<br />
Raymond Chandler.  The movie starts out slow&#8230;but the character<br />
studies of half a dozen people (Charlie&#8217;s drunken best friend, the<br />
too-hot-to-handle blonde who runs his favorite strip club, his<br />
accomplice Vic, the bartender, the strippers, and two extremely<br />
dyfunctional families) are lighting a bunch of fuses, and when they<br />
burn to their ends there will be hell to pay.</p>
<p>This movie isn&#8217;t quite as funny as <cite>Grosse Point Blank</cite><br />
was and in some ways is even darker, but it has the same<br />
dead-on-target, never-miss-a-note quality in the script and the<br />
dialogue.  I enjoyed every second of it.</p>
<p>Unaccountably, this movie has been getting poor reviews.  But it is<br />
so much better than most of the bloated mega-pictures Hollywood cranks<br />
out that there is barely any comparison.  Eric sez see it.  If nothing else,<br />
it&#8217;s likely to permanently cure you of any desire to hang out in<br />
strip clubs.</p>
