The Iceman

In the first season of Dexter, back when the show was good, the villain, who allegedly transported his victims in a refrigerated van, became known as the Ice Truck Killer. He would drain their blood and cut them up into pieces and then put them out on display for the police to find. Most people probably do not realize that the show -- at least in its early years -- including this unforgettable foe, are based on true events. The origin story of the Ice Truck Killer is, in fact, a serial killer known as The Iceman.

Okay, I'm just fucking with you. The show Dexter and the movie The Iceman are not, to my knowledge, in any way related. And the former is certainly not based on true events. I just can't resist an opportunity to point out how Dexter was once a great show and then stopped being one. But I guess we're here to talk about movies. So here's The Iceman...

Dylan: I watch Boardwalk Empire. And I think I’m not alone in saying that Michael Shannon’s character has quite a lot of crazy brewing just below the surface. He doesn’t get a lot of screen time, but whenever he shows up, my fingers are crossed that he'll snap and kill everyone. The fact that he is usually held back, on a show filled with lunatics mass murdering each other only fuels the anticipation. But that's a discussion for another time. Well, as far as I can tell, this movie, The Iceman, is explosive release of that same character's insanity (granted, about forty/fifty years in the future). Shannon has an intensity in all of his projects, but this is the first time he goes full-on sociopath from beginning to end.

Mark: Which I found kinda refreshing.  This movie starts with him playing the gentleman as he courts his future wife.  It plays it slow, letting us see, or at least what I thought at the time, The Iceman before he snaps or whatever.  And then two scenes later the blood starts flowing.  There is no build-up, no origin of this killer.  He just was.  So we are dropped into his life and watch as he sinks deeper and deeper into his life of a sociopathic hitman.  But while I say this is good, it also leaves us groundless.  Time flies in this film; years go by, but only occasionally is the date given as a reference point.  I understand this was a long period of his life, but it felt disjointed.  Things flew by, and while moments were entertaining, I got lost a bit in the shuffle of it.

Dylan: Yea totally. I enjoyed Shannon’s crazy face (which is his normal visage), as I always do. But the rest of the movie was severely lacking. Only one scene with Shannon’s character, Richard, and his brother really attempts to divulge some of the history and childhood events that spawned his homicidal tendencies. And it comes halfway through the movie. Aside from that, we gather everything we can, basically, from the way he literally looks at the general public vs. the way he looks at his wife and kids. I also thought that the mafiosos and their storyline was only partially developed. There was Roy and Leo, and some problem between them. But it was barely fleshed out enough to understand how it played into Richard’s life. Especially since, as you mentioned, two decades went by, and it was unclear who was being killed and who Richard was killing people for. Also, since we didn’t mention this: the movie is about a notorious mob (freelance) hitman.

Mark: While watching this, all I could feel is that this story should have been told as a mini-series, so that the time jumps would feel less jolting, and the characters would benefit from more growth and depth.  Everyone, really even Richard, feels like just a caricature.  Richard is brooding and brimming with rage, and that’s it.  Roy, played by a Ray Liotta who seems like he’s sleepwalking through this, is just your run-of-the-mill mafia boss.  I love me some Michael Shannon, but somewhere along the line of the movie’s production, someone told him that his stoic face is really good, and he stuck with.  The only two characters I found myself being really interested in were Josh Rosenthal and Mr. Freezy; Josh because he is played by a David Schwimmer hoping you won’t recognize him.  And Mr. Freezy because Chris Evans hams it up and knocks it out of the park.

Dylan: The reason I brought up Boardwalk is because there is a whole TV series there to flesh out the normal side of Shannon’s character and the events that send him over the edge. And yea, all we get here is a caricature. And that goes for Liotta, too. When did they decide he was the go-to mafia boss character? Goodfellas was great, but even in that, he was just an Irish coke fiend. I agree that Chris Evans was good. It’s great to see him in different roles. He’s like a male Scarlet Johannson (the rockin’ bod); you know he’s in stuff other than The Avengers, but you haven’t really seen much of it. But in this film, he is another character that suffers from two-dimensionality. It would have been more interesting to see how Mr. Freezy’s flavor of craziness differed from Richard’s, and how the two of them work together and try to understand each other. But instead he is introduced, has a few lines here and there, and then leaves.

Mark: But at least for Mr. Freezy, I felt some life being pumped into the film.  They may have been only a few lines, but they had energy.  And you can also see that Chris Evans was still rocking the Captain America physique.  It actually made his character more ridiculous, but in a good way.  But he highlights the biggest flaw in the movie: it’s very shallow.  The story is focused solely on telling you the history of Richard Kuklinski, but nothing more.  Like, it hits on major moments in his life, jumping from one to the next, never letting you sit and watch him develop.  All the changes happen in the time jumps, we just get to see the next stage in the evolution of the Iceman.  Not to say that the life of the Iceman wasn’t interesting, but I wanted something more personal, cause with things just flying by, pivitol moments that change the course of his life just feel like bulletpoints.

Dylan: True. It was just sort of handed to us that his killings were picking up publicity and that there was a killer known as the Iceman when we saw a newspaper headline. There was no indication of the severity of organized crime in that area and at that time. Maybe we were just supposed to know. I don’t know. The movie was entertaining. But it was missing a lot of substance.

And I meant to comment on what you said about David Schwimmer’s role. How can we picture that mope as anything other than the whiney, neurotic Ross from Friends? Here he is a drug dealer/mob enforcer? Yea right. That was kind of lame. And I was really hoping Richard would murder him. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t.

Mark: Which is why I found him so unintentionally hilarious.  And I realize we’re talking heavy on the acting and characters, but really, that’s all there is to this.  As for things like direction or score, I found them to be fine.  Well, actually, a bunch of scenes seemed to have a weird filter that made everything one uniformed color.  I swear there was a scene where Richard is with his family and everything is a shade of orange.  It was so bizarre.  And the music sounded like the same musical cue for the Joker in The Dark Knight.  It worked, but felt like it was aping another, obviously better film.

Dylan:  Overall, I’d say it was very...average, in most respects. Nothing special in any particular department. It’s literally Michael Shannon releasing some of the rage he’s been building up in his other TV/film roles. No character has any sort of arc or growth throughout the hour and a half. So, while it was watchable and somewhat enjoyable, I’m not sure I would recommend it. Really nothing remarkable here.

Mark: We both only really watched this because we have a fascination bordering on obsession with Michael Shannon.  But yeah, unless you really want to know some key points in the life of The Iceman -- a supposedly notorious hit man I had never even heard of up to this point -- I can’t really recommend this for any other reason.  Nothing stands out that sets it above any other film.  Though, does any other film have a scene of Michael Shannon attempting to dance with his arms in the air like he just don’t care?  Not that I can think of.

Dylan: Thank you for reminding me of that! Greatest scene ever! Yes, I forgot about the Michael Shannon at the club scene. I have to say, that alone makes the film at least a little bit watchable. Anyways, yea, I guess I expected some fascinating character study mixed with historical drama. But Shannon already flaunted his slightly off acting chops in Take Shelter. It’s not like he owes me anything.

Mark:  Yeah, I guess that’s one thing this movie did for me: make me want to rewatch Take Shelter, a much better movie.  Which incidentally made me look up the director of Take Shelter and I found out he’s making another movie with Michael Shannon.  So we have something to look forward to.

Dylan: Yea, and I also have to watch Mud, if I can ever get my hands on it.

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It slipped my mind at the time, but I would also like to add that James Franco's role in this film is completely overstated. I see on the film poster he has the third credit, when in fact he spent possibly the least amount of time in the film of any character. There may have even been a corpse in a freezer that got more screen time then Franco. So if you're considering seeing this movie because it has his name at the time, don't bother. 

And that's all we got.