"You're dead, man. Don't just stand there pretending you're not."
I'm guessing most people haven't heard of this one. I hadn't either until it popped up on my Netflix suggestions under quirky crime movies. I liked the cast, so I figured it was worth a shot. Thankfully, my instincts are pretty sharp when it comes to things like this.
Charlie Arglist (John Cusack in puffy drunk mode) is a sleazy lawyer working for the mob in Witchita (boy, the mob will set up anywhere, huh?). Fed up with his shitty life and harboring vague dreams of something better, Charlie and his lowlife partner Vic (Billy Bob Thorton playing his usual) conspire to steal two million dollars from Charlie's boss on Christmas Eve. Unfortunately, complications arise in the form of a icy winter storm, a vicious mob enforcer (Mike Starr, who apparently only plays vicious mob enforcers) and Charlie's desperate infatuation with a sexy strip club owner (Connie Nielsen, homina homina homina). Everything works out for everyone in the end. Except not at all.
A lot of crime gems seem to fly under the radar nowadays (The Lookout with Joseph Gordon-Levitt was the last one I discovered). The Ice Harvest clocks in at just under an hour and a half, but it's breezy pace doesn't keep it from developing a chilly atmosphere, compelling characters and a twisty little plot that manages to balance suspense and dark humor. Harold Ramis (best known for playing Egon in The Ghostbusters movies and directing Caddyshack) has directed a lot of pretty lame crap over the past decade, including the Analyze This movies, Bedazzled and Year One. Seeing as how he seems to work almost exclusively within the realm of comedy, I was very pleasantly surprised, both by the number of sequences in this film that kept me on the edge of my seat, and by its dreary, almost nihilistic tone.
Ramis does an excellent job of portraying Witchita as the epitome of Middle-American banality; cookie-cutter and bland at best, sleazy and desperate at worst. All the main characters in the film have had the life and soul ground out of them long ago and are now trying in vain to escape their lives by any means necessary. And yet, one gets the sense that all the money and freedom in the world wouldn't make them happier or better people. The icy storm that keeps the characters trapped in Witchita is one of the most tactile uses of weather I've seen in a film recently. Everything is soggy; cold, but not quite frozen. Everyone is slipping through slush, pulling their jackets tight against the wind and sleet. It's wet and disgusting, but that seems a bit more truthful than the stark, perfect whiteness of the winters usually seen on film.
I imagine that this would have been a very different film if they had decided to play it straight with the casting. Despite a slight Coen Brothers-esque quirk to some of the plot points (I'm thinking of the trunk sequence, which best exemplifies that morbid/funny dicotomy), most of the humor in the film, dark or otherwise, comes from the actors. I suppose one could argue that Cusack is playing against type in this movie, but in a way, I don't think he's really capable of that. Even when playing Charlie Arglist, a cowardly, incompetent dipshit, Cusack manages to bring an empathy and warmth to the character that probably would not have been present in the hands of many other actors. One could draw a pretty clear line from this performance back to his work in The Grifters, and I would like to see him in more roles like this. I feel like for every good movie I see him in, I see him in trailers for five movies like Must Love Dogs.
If you think Cusack is playing against type in this, you'd probably say that Billy Bob Thorton is typecast as Vic Cavanaugh, Charlie's brash, scummy partner. Thorton plays his usual hard-drinking, sour-faced douchebag character in this, but he does it well and its a lot of fun to watch him bounce off Cusack. The film plays with nicely with convention by starting immediately after the heist has been pulled off and diving right into the aftermath. You quickly get the impression that Charlie and Vic weren't particularly close friends prior to the events of the film, more like guys who just saw each other around the local bars and cooked up the plan one night over drinks. When their schemes start to unravel, the speed with which their trust for each other degenerates is both amusing and unnerving to watch.
The MVP performance of the film is Oliver Platt as Charlie's drunken loser of a best friend who is married to Charlie's ex-wife, who hates them both. It's a weird dynamic and although Platt doesn't really contribute much to the plot, the chunk of the night Charlie attempts to pass drinking with him is some of the funniest stuff in the film. Also solid are Connie Nielsen (the gorgeous Danish actress best known in the US as the female lead in Gladiator) as Renata, a very effective femme fatale, and Randy Quaid in a small but interesting turn as the mob boss who's been ripped off by Charlie and Vic. I never thought I'd find Randy Quaid threatening, but damn if he doesn't pull it off here.
If you like Fargo or any of the Coen Brothers other crime flicks, you'll probably like The Ice Harvest, although it doesn't push as hard for its weirdness as those films do. Low-key, small-scale crime films have rapidly become one of my favorite subgenres, and I'd encourage you to support them whenever possible.
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