- Title: The Ice Harvest
- IMDb: link
Pushing Tin was released in 1999. It was a semi-dark comedy with Cusack and Thornton as air traffic controllers that missed the mark badly and crashed right into the control tower well before it’s scheduled landing. It seems history was doomed to repeat itself as the two have re-teamed up to give us the drab and rather ordinary The Ice Harvest. Maybe these guys should just stay out of each other’s careers for their own sakes and ours.
On Christmas Eve mob lawyer Charlie Arglist (John Cusack) and stip club owner Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) have stolen over two million dollars cash from Kansas mobsters. Problems mount as the two try to avoid suspicion and make it through the night before their flight out of town the following morning. Subplots involve Charlie’s friend Pete (Oliver Platt) who is married to his ex-wife and a strip club owner Renata (Connie Nielsen) who Charlie has a crush on and considers helping in a blackmailing scheme.
From the start the movie goes through and identity crisis as it cannot decide what it wants to be. Trying to be an offbeat dark comedy, film noir, suspenseful, dramatic, slasher flick doesn’t really succeed. The result is comedy that’s not really funny, drama that is far from dramatic, and a plot that lags much longer than the film’s 88 minute running time.
Cusack in a weary performance has the misfortune of carrying the movie; Thornton appears in less than half the film. The best performances are by characters that are on-screen in little more than cameo roles. Platt is fine as the drunken friend and really provides the only funny moments of the film. Nielsen comes off great as the femme fatale and I hope she is cast in better movies in the future.
Overall, despite some strong performances a few good scenes the film just never comes together. It feels too much like Harold Ramis and the writers are mixing genres at random because they honestly don’t know what story they are trying to tell.
A final note – the movie is supposed to take place in Wichita, Kansas (it was actually filmed in Illinois) and anyone who knows, or has spend ten seconds in, Wichita will find some obvious inconsistencies with how the city is presented to reality. Note to fim makers Kansas isn’t a completely barren wasteland filled with nothing but Dunkin Donuts and all nude strip clubs (which according to the film Wichita has at least 5 different clubs all with Hollywood quality strippers).
This film had the bad timing to come out just weeks after Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (read the review here), a superior film which deals with similiar genres and issues but actually does it in a funny and entertaining way. I had high hopes going into this movie only to have them dashed by the extremely mediocre story involving a heist that has already occurred before the film starts and is never really explained during the film. From their the story moves through Charlie’s misadventures over the night. I was fooled into thinking Pushing Tin would be a good movie and here I was fooled again thinking Harold Ramis could get a good movie out of these two stars. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…well you know the rest.