THE ICE HARVEST
Directed by: Harold Ramis.
Produced by: Albert Berger & Ron Yerxa.
Written by: Richard Russo & Robert Benton, based on the novel by Scott Phillips.
Director of Photography: Alar Kivilo.
Edited by: Lee Percy.
Music by: David Kitay.
Released by: Focus.
Country of Origin: USA. 88 min. Rated: R.
With: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Randy Quaid, & Oliver Platt.

Richard Russo and Robert Benton's script boasts an entire cast of characters that are uniformly irredeemable. The few who aren't are defeated and pitiable - but these are mostly children. Our narrator, small-time lawyer and part-time strip club owner Charlie Arglist (John Cusack), is somewhere in between. Like one of his strippers, Charlie is bruised, morally bankrupt, and desperate, deciding life owes him more than he's getting as an attorney for Kansas' little-known mafia, and so he and fellow strip joint owner Vic (Billy Bob Thorton) skim a cool $2,147,000 from Charlie's boss (Randy Quaid). The film follows Charlie's drunken night after the heist - a Christmas Eve with a body count. At a time when The Polar Express is being theatrically re-released and traversing the box office, The Ice Harvest is the feel-good holiday treat for the rest of us.

Director Harold Ramis turns Wichita into a grease pit of countless strip clubs and sterile suburban houses that better resemble dentist offices than the homes of America's heartland. Ramis' Wichita is all brown snow and bathroom stalls, creating a dark playground for his depraved characters. With snappy dialogue and hearty sexual tension, The Ice Harvest is masterfully moody. The cast plays up the tone with pitch-perfect hammy acting, with Thornton and Connie Nielsen (as the distant femme fatale Renata) leading the pack. What distract from the cynical fun are the predictable tricks of the plot and the stale, all-too-familiar characters. Cusack puts a noble effort into fleshing out Charlie, but he varies too often between portraying a sniveling ball of timidity and a collected alcoholic with a superiority complex. But this is one of those films that you have to sit back and enjoy the mood without letting the lack of realism bother you - kind of like The Miracle on 34th Street, but with a few more shotguns. Zachary Jones
November 30, 2005