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Description
Holiday movies don’t get much darker, or more darkly humorous, than The Ice Harvest,
an offbeat comedy that defies expectations. The involvement of director
Harold Ramis might lead some to expect a straight-up comedy like Groundhog Day or Analyze This,
but despite Ramis’s fine and atypically subdued work here, it’s the
writers (Robert Benton and Richard Russo) who put a stronger stamp on
their adaptation of the novel by Scott Phillips. Benton and Russo
previously collaborated on Nobody’s Fool and Twilight
(with Benton also directing), and those films are similar in tone and
spirit to this quirky, modern-day film noir, set on a freezing Christmas
Eve in Wichita, Kansas, where mob lawyer Charlie Arglist (John Cusack)
has a lot on his mind. He’s just stolen $2 million from his boss (Randy
Quaid), he can’t trust his partner Vic (Billy Bob Thornton), he’s
secretly in love with the manager (Connie Nielsen) of the strip bar he
owns, and his best friend (Oliver Platt, giving yet another terrific
performance) is married to his ex-wife. Before the night’s over, several
murders will complicate matters even further, and throughout it all, The Ice Harvest
is anchored by Cusack’s good-natured presence in a bad-natured story
that dares to combine double-crosses and bloodshed with elusive yuletide
cheer. It’s a strange but oddly appealing combination, not for all
tastes but refreshing for that very same reason.
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