43 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
43 lines
2.7 KiB
Plaintext
The Ice Harvest
|
|
<p>In 1997 I was delighted by <cite>Grosse Point Blank</cite>, John<br />
|
|
Cusack’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’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’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’s been ripped off. All Charlie has to do until the<br />
|
|
roads clear is…act normal.</p>
|
|
<p>But it’s Christmas Eve. Charlie has a million dollars in the bag.<br />
|
|
He’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’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…but the character<br />
|
|
studies of half a dozen people (Charlie’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’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’s likely to permanently cure you of any desire to hang out in<br />
|
|
strip clubs.</p>
|