Dir. Harold Ramis, US, 2005, 88 mins Cast: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielson, Lara Phillips, Randy Quaid
Light in the plot but heavy on the sarcasm, director Harold Ramis slings this holiday ditty at us in the shades of Bad Santa. Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack team up beautifully as partners in crime whose crime goes well while the partnership doesn’t. Taken from the new pulp novel of 2000 by Scott Phillips, in a sort of Jim Thompson take, this is a blackly comic thriller in the vein of Romeo Is Bleeding. Great fun if a little limp in places, Oliver Platt shores up the film by being the world’s best overweight mate. The story is simple: Charlie, a mobster’s legal man (Cusack) has little to live for, having been through a bitter breakup with his wife who took the kids (and who married the world’s best overweight mate Platt, as it happens). Charlie’s partner Vic (Thornton) is a quiet kind of guy, giving the impression that everything is fine and dandy. The pair team up to steal a hefty sum from gang boss Randy Quaid (here playing evil with genuine relish). Both of them hate the town of Wichita, where it just so happens the laws are changing for strip joints and everyone is blue about it. Bouncing from one lap dance pavilion to another, Charlie’s life seems to be a vast wasteland littered with liquor and women wearing pasties. But when the partners decided to hightail out it of town, money in general becomes the focus for everyone. Although this is not the laughfest that we may expect from Ramis or that we know the sum of the parts of this black comedy (which is shot almost entirely without a ray of sunshine) could have made a splendid comic thriller, The Ice Harvest has dialogue that is unbelievably memorable, rivalling only Kiss Kiss Bang Bang for wit. When Vic’s wife is found dead, slumped over some gifts, Charlie comments that she is dead, killed by someone else. Vic replies, referring to the hitman, “He said, ‘Tell me where the money is or I'll shoot her.’ I think he was counting on a level of commitment that just wasn't there.” This is a long dark tunnel of fear and fun which doesn’t hit the heights but certainly hits some tantalising lows. It may not make you laugh out loud, but it did me. Karen Krizanovich
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