REVIEW

The Iceman

The family man-cum-brutal assassin dynamic has become a standard crime flick cliche in the post-Sopranos world, but clearly this character type is cinematic catnip to filmmakers. The details may change slightly, but the gist - a cold-blooded, savage killer who is, by contrast, kind and attentive with his own family - remains ever the same. It also doesn’t hurt that there seems an endless array of real-life mob hit men to use as source material.

What stands out, then, about Ariel Vromen’s factbased mob flick is less the details and plot - which, like Greek tragedy, has onlyone kind of trajectory it can follow - but, rather, how well his cast manifests the darkly violent material. The idea might feel pretty much played out, but the characters do offer the actors a chance to explore all kinds of peculiar emotional terrain. In this respect, especially, Michael Shannon does not disappoint,which should not surprise you, but the other standout performance almost certainly will.

Shannon, as cagey and persuasive an actor as any in his generation, has slowly been growing his screen presence, winning acclaim (and an Oscar nod) in 2008’s Revolutionary Road, then as a recurring character on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and as a muse to Jeff Nichols in films such as Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter. Tall, steely and rigid, with thin lips and a lantern jaw, he could play coldhearted villains and conniving mobsters in his sleep, but there’s a sense that he’s holding something back which makes his performances feeledgy, and more than a little dangerous.

Here, carrying the burden of a leading man, he plays real-life contract killer Richard Kuklinski, a psychopath based in Newark, N.J.

Shannon plays him as a hulking enigma, quiet to himself, but seething under that placid surface with an unquenchable rage. He is a born serial killer, starting out his career as a child torturing small animals, an early hallmark of the personality type. A bit later, while first courting his eventual wife, Deborah (Winona Ryder), Kuklinski has moved on to the profitable business of pirating porn movies. Eventually, this leads him to cross paths with an organized crime family, lead by Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta), who is impressed with his cool demeanor and attention to violent detail. Before too long, Kuklinski is running hits for various crime families, while also simultaneously helping Deborah raise their children.

Moving on to bigger and more complex kills, Kuklinski partners up with another budding psychopath, Robert Pronge (Chris Evans), whose gimmick involves driving a Mr. Softee ice-cream truck both as a twisted cover and as a means of freezing the corpses of his victims (which puts a serious monkey wrench into the time of death in coroner’s reports), before things start to go seriously south.

Apart from Shannon’s relentless grind, the film also features a breakout performance from Evans, so sheathed in ’70s-era hair and facial hair as to be nearly unrecognizable.

Narrated by Kuklinski, the film’s only method of differentiation is one of degree. The savage dichotomy of Kuklinski’s psychosis - loving family man who tells his family he works in “finance” to stone-cold sadistic killer who once delays killing a victim in order to prove to him once and for all that the God he’s praying to won’t do anything to intervene on his behalf - twists the dial well past 11, and yet, it hardly moves the needle.

The Iceman 87 Cast: Michael Shannon, Winona Ryder, Ray Liotta, Chris Evans Director: Ariel Vromen Rating: R, for strong violence, pervasive language and some sexual content Running time: 106 minutes

MovieStyle, Pages 31 on 05/24/2013

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