Here's how you know a movie is bad.
Earlier this week. Int. dining room chez cinetrix and 'Fesser. They talk while tucking into a succulent hot bird.
Cinetrix: God, I haven't posted in ages. I'm totally in a slump. Plus, I haven't seen anything since we watched The Ice Harvest last weekend.
'Fesser [pauses, bemused]: Wow. I haven't thought about that movie at all. I completely forgot we watched it.
And... scene.
Jesus God is The Ice Harvest bad. Talk about punching above your weight. And it shouldn't be, which is what makes it even worse. Directed by he may have become a hack but he's our hack [Ghostbusters generation, reprazent] Harold Ramis and with a writing credit from Richard Russo, the movie stars a pale, puffy, bloated John Cusack as not too bright mob lawyer Charlie and the wiry and even paler Billy Bob Thornton as his pornographer partner Vic. They've conspired to steal a substantial amount of money from Charlie's crooked boss Bill Guerrard [Randy Quaid. I know.] and are about to blow town. Until inclement weather rolls in, and they're stuck. In Witchita [probably the most original aspect of the flick]. On Christmas Eve. Ho ho fucking ho hum.
This set-up should yield something bleak and dark and funny. Should. As Charlie's drunken pal and one-time cuckolder Pete, Oliver Platt is all three, but it's tough to say what Pete's doing there. Hell, what anyone's doing there. Meanwhile, Connie Nielsen lets her Cherries in the Snow-hued lipstick do the acting for her as Renata, the strip club-owning femme fatale Charlie fancies. There's also an incriminating photo of a local pol in flagrante. And a menacing heavy keeps asking after our hero. And so on.
We never learn what made Charlie's heist scheme so clever, and he certainly doesn't convince as the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree. Instead, folks get shot, fingers get vised, Thornton's Vic acts oily, and Charlie keeps getting pulled over by an amiable cop--and let go. The cop has the right idea: Charlie's not worth bothering with.
But perhaps the greatest crime in The Ice Harvest is the dialogue. The cinetrix can't remember the last time she was subjected to something so overwritten and implausible. It's clear the writers drank deep from the poisonous cup of Chandler and Hammet [and even Leonard]. Yet all the viewer gets served is swilly backwash, which proves impossible to swallow without gagging.
[Thank god we're not in Kansas anymore.]
