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The Ice Harvest (2005) More at IMDbPro »

Ice warmth, 15 January 2009
Author: ruiresende84 (ruiresende84@gmail.com) from Porto, Portugal

I've just commented on a remarkable film, 'caramel'. The reason why i say that now is because i think that beautiful film worked exactly the opposite way of this. There we had a mood, the film in itself had its own "personality", as a living organism, and all the characters (who were looking for a similar mood in their lives) were inserted in that context. Here we have characters who try to build the mood of the film, through their actions. The film is an empty shell, which the characters are supposed to fill, with what they are, as characters, yes, but mostly as actors. The success of this approach has to do, of course, with the casting. Here they have Cusack, who is increased value from the beginning. I admire what he does. He has lesser range than other good actors, like Depp, but he is so flexible inside his acting type. His greatest quality is the way he previously reads what is needed from him to make things work and fit himself to the film machine. He faces himself as one piece of the game. Connie Nielsen is also quite interesting, and curiously she fits better here than she did in 'Devil's advocate'. All the other actors just do their lines, clueless, except Billy Bob, who actually thinks that this has really to do with his characters and how he performs, and how he looks, and how he, he, he...

These issues apart, i think this has an interesting idea. Not untried, but still interesting. It is not a clever narrative construction, actually rather predictable except for a minor twist at the end, but it manages to overcome those predictabilities, by hitting the key that interests Ramis more: the comedy. Here comedy happens when we feel characters deviate from the main issue, and that's the interest of it. It's apparently about a robbery, but than Cusack spends most of his time in parallel themes, the police is totally clueless and instead trying to grow on Cusack, to get in the eye of the local mobs, who are actually the ones being stolen. The family themes are also in this field. So it's a matter of establishing a main theme, and than focuses on the surrounding "lesser" themes.

What taste bitter is the feeling that this could really be much much more powerful that what it is. It stopped half the way through something really good.

My opinion: 3/5

http://www.7eyes.wordpress.com

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