WasAnnon Slow pace in the most part of the movie.

Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

Comwayon A Disappointing Continuation

Yash Wade Close shines in drama with strong language, adult themes.

june-sasser This is my Christmas movie. I did not like Cusac for years because he is not a leading man looking dude. However, after seeing him hold the screen in Grifters, Gross Point Blank, and this, one of my top ten, I now consider him the modern Bogey. Billy Bob is just Billy Bob. Nobody else that I know of could deliver the lines " He was depending on a level of affection and concern that just wasn't there" and "If you think you're getting out of that trunk, you are one optimistic motherf--er" with the savoire- fare that Willy Rob can. As another clued in individual stated in their great review, "It's a Wonder Boys, It's a Big Lebowski, It's a Nobody's Fool" If you've seen and appreciate these gems 'nuff said.

blanche-2 I understand this was not a well-marketed film - I don't remember when it came out. Apparently it was marketed as a comedy, which it isn't. It's a noir with some very funny moments. Most of the end of the film is darn serious.I love John Cusack, and here, he plays a Wichita mob lawyer named Charlie Arglist. But don't get him mixed up with one of those slick mob lawyers, he's one of those who just does what he's told by some powerful men.He and a friend, Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) steal 2-1/2 million dollars from Charlie's boss, one Bill Guerrard (Randy Quaid). It's Christmas Eve, and the men have decided that instead of seeming guilty and blowing town, they are going to stay until the early morning, and then take off for Kansas City's airport.Vic is storing the money, and he's cool and collected; Charlie is a mess. He wants to leave town with the beautiful sex bomb Renata (Connie Nielsen) who owns a strip club in town.It's a lousy night of rain and ice, and the ever-nervous Charlie winds up taking a drunken friend, Pete (Oliver Platt) home, and he keeps running into the police for one reason or another. It's not helping his nerves.Then Charlie finds himself in a bad situation when he realizes that he doesn't know whom to trust, requiring him to make some big -- and quick -- decisions.Parts of this film, as I said, are quite funny, including Oliver Platt throwing up in Charlie's car, and Charlie complaining that he had the whole outdoors to throw up in -- why throw up in his car? When he takes Pete home, he comes face to face with his ex-wife (whom Pete is married to), resentful children, and ex-in-laws. Directed by Harold Ramis, this movie is reminiscent of the Coen Brothers, maybe Fargo, with a schmo in the middle of something big, and its humor, with the action taking place during a bleak, dark winter night.John Cusack makes the film for me - he is understated, a nice guy into something he's having trouble handling. We really feel for him. Billy Bob Thornton hands in another wonderful performance as the no-nonsense Vic, used to being a sleaze, and Connie Nielsen embodies the noir woman, hearkening back to the '40s with her wavy hair and sultry voice.This is probably an undeservedly underrated film, which is a shame. "You're the nicest man I know," someone tells Charlie. "I'm sorry to hear you say that," Charlie says, "but thank you." Highly recommended.

Kate Dixon (foolwiththefez) As this movie opens, our main character, Charlie (John Cusack) explains how he believes that it is possible to commit the perfect crime. In his opinion, all you need is to be the kind of person who would never commit a crime. This is the kind of circular logic that rules not only the film, but Charlie's life as well.Charlie has, in a monumentally out of character moment of courage, has just stolen two million dollars from his mob-boss employer. Now all he and his wonderfully droll partner, Vic (Billy Bob Thorton), have to do is go their separate ways and wait out the icy Kansas rain. Their plan is to meet up when the weather clears and head for the airport and parts unknown.Watching Charlie realize that he would be all but incapable of dealing with the normal perils of Christmas Eve, much less a Christmas Eve on which he has just committed an extraordinarily dangerous crime. He all but hangs a sign around his neck saying that he's leaving town. He wonders from one of his usual haunts to another being nice to people and trying to seduce the one woman he's lusted after for years, the lovely Renata (Connie Nielsen) who seems to manage a seedy strip club. He knows that his boss's chief hit-man is looking for him, but keeps going to familiar places none-the-less. He eventually hooks up with a friend, Pete (Oliver Platt), who is, perhaps, the only person in town who is both more drunk than Charlie and less equipped to deal with the miasma of holiday cheer in which they find themselves.While these events start out like a screwball comedy, the movie quickly descends into the morass of complications, lies, secret motivations, and murder that define film noir. It amazed me just how dark the movie became. It moves from scenes of incredible humor, such as Oliver Platt showing the kind of simultaneous recklessness and concern for his body that is endemic of drunks or Billy Bob Thorton and John Cusack discussing whether a Lincoln or a Mercedes is more suited to transporting a body, to scenes filled with an almost nausea-inducing sense of dread and despair. Despite all the wonderful performances and spot on dialogue, I think the aspect of this film that shines the most is it's ability to shift gears and tone so seamlessly without betraying it's characters and plot.I won't give away the ending, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention how perfect it is. The last scene of this movie proves that the filmmakers know the noir genre well enough to know exactly how they should end if they could end happily, though they can't.

johnnyboyz At once brutally violent but often typically underplayed, Harold Ramis' blackly comedic film noir The Ice Harvest falls short of several stalls in a post-Fargo; post-Pulp Fiction world of crime, comedy and violence fusing together. The film has a laid-back aura to it, an atmosphere that doesn't necessarily suggested laziness, but just carries that tag most John Cusak films seem to carry in their overall demeanour, as both the calm and reassuring voice and presence of the man occupies the bulk of proceedings twinned with the overall fact the people in the film are snowed in, bogged down and are unable to manoeuvre around all that much. One doubts many of those interested in the above films or content will find an awful lot of what happens in The Ice Harvest particularly new or interesting; whereas those whom arrive without the said levels of exposure to the above will more than likely be a little bored by proceedings or finding it frustrating because of its tepid approach to what was probably pitched to them as a fast-talking, smooth-sailing crime comedy starring the actors that it does. John Cusak is playing Charlie Arglist, doing so in that low-key and rather tranquil manner he plays most characters; a suave and criminally minded lawyer based in the Kansas town of Wichita, whose forlorn face greets us as he stands roadside in the middle of snowy nowhere - gazing out into the wilderness whilst narrating. The film lends an analeptic shift back to the beginnings of his tale, a story which is essentially the aftermath to a heist; a heist story without a heist, a heist that saw he and his partner-in-crime steal a large sum of money from Arglist's gangster boss. Things go well; they have a head start on the guy through slow communication processes and the plan appears rosy – the only hitch being that clean getaways out of town, for now, must be placed on hold Groundhog Day-style for all the snowy weather and wintry conditions hemming everyone in. Like all the true noir leads, his outlook on life is nihilistic at worst; but a man, in relation to the rest of the town, whose reputation and local distinction carries with it enough in the form of prominence to allow for a police officer to sheepishly apologise and meekly leave the scene after having pulled Arglist over one evening shedding any distinct 'loner' characteristics.His partnership with Billy-Bob Thornton's Vic Cavanaugh is unrealistic at best; this prim and informed lawyer working with this well-built, scuzzy pornographer doesn't ring particularly true and we have a hard time believing they'd operate together – with one the "brains" and the other the "brawn", their partnership has seemingly worked up to now. Their idea of this robbery brings with it Cusak's own verbal confirmation of its severity when outlining precisely what will happen to them if they're caught, the complications that arise out of plans going awry trying to imbue proceedings with this sustained level of threat but not necessarily doing so. One of these complications is the character played by Danish actress Connie Nielsen, whom slinks into proceedings as the archetypal Renata - someone whose first task is to breeze into view in slow motion having just departed from some strip club changing rooms to Arglist's onlooking gaze – the femme fatale with the low voice; free-flowing hair and ability to size up Cusak's male lead character within seconds of meeting him, in regards to what he's done, alludes to empowerment; ability and genre code in this regard.From intriguing beginnings comes a film about very little; a film with a likable enough lead played by an actor it's very difficult to root against stuck in a situation with a great deal at stake, and yet whose tale is ultimately really rather dull. The film is frequently very violent, but violence which arrives uneasily and in a disjointed manner not in sync with the film's bulk, making for a deeply unguided overall tone. Throughout, characters are shot in various places and one even looses a thumb; howls of pain or agony give way to 'funny' surprised expressions, and on occasion quirky one liners, before death or otherwise. The Ice Harvest aims high in the sense long passages of the film play out to not-an-awful-lot unfolding; sub-plots attempting to subvert the main course by having characters explore their ties between others finding room to wedge in with a chance-scenario aesthetic which does not work. Where the film aims are nearer the dizzier realms which made it difficult to forget certain natural instances in 1996's Fargo, instances such as the one in which two criminal cohorts ordered to kidnap someone drive for a long time with only the one of them attempting conversation to the other's stone silence – a sequence which was remarkably played and whose air of authenticity brought about degrees of involvement as what it was their presence in the film for was placed on hold. About an hour into The Ice Harvest, the money's been swiped; Cusak's character is doing very little bar the roaming around with the unwelcome presence of Oliver Platt playing drunk, and the character of Renata is waltzing around as if told to find some other work because one of Brian de Palma's recent noir pastiche concoctions is fully booked. In short, not good. The film plays like a complete jigsaw puzzle whose less than vital pieces have been forced together to concoct a kind of shape, or colour tone, which fits in with what's in its immediate vicinity; various bits and pieces ranging from star power and reputation, to unabashed genre conventions, to better films from down the years that have tried similar material looming overhead all meshing together and forming this: a film from a man whose comedic pieces in the past I have liked, but here doesn't produce something which holds together as strongly as one would have liked.