RED ENVELOPES: So Falls Wichita Falls

I mentioned watching an odd Netflix double feature, and while it doesn't quite reach the heights of my beloved pairing of Chicken Run and Shaft, I'm pretty proud of the bizarre combination that is An American in Paris and The Ice Harvest. That'll really give your brain the shakes.

If you saw previews for this movie, you probably assumed that it was going to be some sort of comedy. Maybe one of those dark comedies, with murder and death and stuff. But still a comedy. Almost like a Home Alone for adults. Let me disabuse you of that notion right now. While The Ice Harvest is not without laughs, they are rare, and about as sad and dark as they come.

A quick glance at the plot should give you all the warning you need. John Cusack is Charlie, a shady attorney in flat, cold Wichita, Kansas. Charlie, with the help of his friend, the local porn merchant Vic (the always-happy-to-play-an-unsavory-character Billy Bob Thornton), is stealing two million dollars from his boss, a ruthless gangster played by Randy Quaid. Along the way, he'd like to strike up a romance with the manager of one of Quaid's strip clubs (Connie Nielsen, the film's only casting misstep), but ends up spending far too much time with Oliver Platt, the drunk and unhappy husband who stole Charlie's wife. The hours spent waiting to escape from Wichita, with complications from a freezing storm and one of Quaid's hit men, are more than a little tense.

Now, I suppose you could make comedy out of this premise. The film is not without laughs, a tribute in great part to the cast. Thornton is incapable of being boring, and Platt manages to rise above playing a mere drunk, instead playing an unhappy, confused man who we're meeting at his most drunk. And holding it all together is sadsack Cusack, for whom even the prospect of two million dollars seems to hold no hope or promise. Even as you see Charlie lying to his children, you can't entirely hate him. Cusack makes him human. It's funny how far that goes in movies these days.

I mentioned Nielsen being miscast, and I should go into that a little. She's not an untalented actress (and if I can forgive Joaquin Phoenix for Gladiator, then I should probably extend her the same courtesy). And she's got the right neo-noir look for the part. I just never bought her as the conniving femme fatale she's supposed to be. Maybe part of that is the construction of the film, in which very small people are playing at very big games. But the discovery of her true motivations rings false, even as it makes sense in terms of the story. Maybe I was just distracted by her bizarre Kansan-Danish accent.

In what marks something of a first for me, I'm well acquainted with two of the actors featured in this film. One, Mick Napier in the role of an abusive guitarist, is practically a cameo. (Interesting to watch one of my former teachers getting the crap beaten out of him.) The other, however, is a nice sizable part for T. J. Jagodowski as an eager-to-please cop, and makes him the first person in history to have appeared in both (A) a major motion picture and (B) my living room. In the journalism business, they call this full disclosure, because I thought T. J. was wonderful. In only a few short scenes, he creates a rich character: sycophantic, but not immune to hurt. A brief scene where he tries to get Cusack to remember his name has more depth than many entire movies. Bravo, T. J. (And yes, you can send my check directly to me at home.)

In the end, you get what you pay for, and if you plop your money down for a small crime noir set in Kansas in the dead of winter, The Ice Harvest is really the only way that can turn out. The question, then, is why you would ever want to do that. Director Harold Ramis moves the film along at a brisk pace (it clocks in at 90 minutes), and the pieces fall into place smoothly and elegantly. But it's a story without joy, and even with everything it does right, that makes it hard to recommend. Even the nastiest, foulest horror flick has some fun to it, even if it's the perverse joy of a gory murder or a grotesque amputation or some such offal. (Not my kind of fun, but clearly someone's.) The Ice Harvest has no joy. Well, almost.

As the abuses and the miseries pile up, the film hurtles toward an ending that is bleak capstone on a pyramid of woe. So the actual denoument is kind of a pleasant surprise. It does have the stink of selling out to Hollywood convention and preview audience tyrrany. (The DVD includes the original, expected finish, so you're welcome to watch the film reach its more logical, expected conclusion.) But I actually kind of liked it. I don't know that anyone in The Ice Harvest has actually earned a happy ending. But I think I earned one. Even the bleakest life is not devoid of joy. After 90 minutes of this film, I was owed an ounce of satisfaction. Transaction completed.