The Iceman

My expectations for The Iceman would have been lowered if I’d remembered its director, Ariel Vromen, also directed Criminal (2016), a sad mess of a film. The Iceman, though, features some of my favorite actors, Michael Shannon and Ray Liotta; watching them helps raise the level of a mundane script.

Shannon plays real-life Richard Kuklinski, shown at the beginning of the film, the early ’60s, shyly taking Deborah (Winona Ryder) on a date. What he doesn’t tell her is that his full-time job is dubbing pornographic films distributed by the mob. When the syndicate, headed by Roy DeMeo (Ray Liotta), shuts down the operation, DeMeo gives Kuklinski the opportunity to become a contract killer, shooting an innocent homeless man as a “tryout”. The real Kuklinski claimed, after his incarceration, to have killed over 200 people, all while raising a family with Deborah. None of his family knew his real occupation until his arrest in 1986.

Based on the book, The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer, by Anthony Bruno and also Arthur Ginsberg’s 2001 documentary, The Iceman Confesses: Secrets of a Mafia Hitman, The Iceman successfully captures the ’60s and ’70s milieu the story takes place in. In that time period, my mother always warned me of ice cream truck drivers who may be selling drugs to us kids and her fears are more than confirmed in the seedy character of Robert ‘Mr. Freezy’ Pronge (Chris Evans), a long-haired hit man in the guise of an ice cream truck driver. ‘Mr. Freezy’, true to his name, demonstrates to Kuklinski how to freeze murdered victims so as to make it hard for coroners to determine the date of death. Thus the name, Iceman.

Some actors’s talents are such a joy that I’ll even watch them in bad movies (see John Huston in Tentacles), and Michael Shannon and Ray Liotta qualify. Ariel Vromen and Morgan Land’s script doesn’t allow for the depth Shannon’s capable of (look at his small but more volatile role four years earlier in Sam Mendes’ Revolutionary Road, for example, or Shannon’s ferocious turn as a Prohibition Agent turned bootlegger in Boardwalk Empire). On the other hand, he is called The Iceman and is portrayed as usually calm, collected and cool. His only remorse at the end of the film is that he hurt his family.

Watching this film reminded me of so many good actors not being utilized in film these days. After Ray Liotta’s critically acclaimed debut in Jonathan Demme’s 1986 Something Wild, one would think he’d become a major star, but he’s been tragically underused in feature films. It was likewise a pleasure to see Winona Ryder again, who plays the naive Deborah Kuklinski to perfection and who has likewise been severely underused in feature films (she does have an ongoing role in the series Stranger Things).

The Iceman would have benefited by a more subtle and elaborate relationship between Kuklinski and Liotta’s Roy DeMeo, who gradually fades from view before the climax of the film. Frankly, the script’s limitations may be partly due to the short duration of feature films. One can imagine much more opportunity for character and plot development if The Iceman had been a series or even miniseries. This doesn’t, though, excuse uninspired writing.

The Iceman also stars James Franco and David Schwimmer as murder victims and Stephen Dorff as Kuklinski’s raping and murdering brother, Joseph (both brothers were mercilessly beaten as youth by their father).

—Michael R. Neno, 2018 Sep 23