More about this DVD  •  DVD Info  •  Movie Main Page  •  Message Board

I started watching the DVD of The Ice Harvest, the new film from director Harold Ramis (Groundhog Day) at around 10:30 a.m. When it was over, it didn’t really hit me one way or the other, good or bad. In such cases, I’ll wait a few hours, then reconsider it. It is now 8 p.m. as I write this, ten hours after seeing it, and I’ve decided that the movie had absolutely no effect on me.

The ingredients are there. After wicked turns in Bad Santa and (to a lesser extent) Bad News Bears, Billy Bob Thornton has become the go-to guy for oily charm and a willingness to dive off the deep end of the politically incorrect pool. John Cusack’s career has been lollygagging around for years and hasn’t taken off in a way that’s lead to any great performances or really great movies (except maybe Say Anything). But I’ve always liked him and since he doesn’t work a tremendous amount, it’s always nice to see him. Ramis, whose place in comedy history is fairly secure, thanks to acting roles in Stripes and Ghostbusters, has been in a directing slump. And this may be the problem. It’s what happens when you take a mainstream comedy director and ask him to be nasty. It doesn’t have the conviction of Terry Zwigoff’s Bad Santa (despite the undeserved happy ending) and, on the other hand, it’s only sporadically funny. The result is a pleasant, professional movie that plays like minor league Elmore Leonard. 

As the movie opens, mob lawyer Charlie (Cusack) and God-knows-what Vic (Thornton) have just stolen two million dollars from Wichita mob boss Bill (Randy Quaid who, if he keeps going, will look as big and round as a Thanksgiving Day Parade float). Charlie and Vic aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. They seem more pathetic and desperate then evil, which may be a function of their home lives. Vic is in a loveless marriage to a woman named Gladys (nowadays, it’s hard to be passionate about a woman named Gladys), while Charlie’s ex-wife is currently married to his friend Pete (a scene stealing Oliver Platt). An ice storm has foiled their immediate escape, so the plan is to wait out the night and then blow town early in the morning. Despite his best intentions, Charlie is unable to lay low. He becomes the involuntary chaperone for Pete, who has become so drunk he thinks his testicles have ascending into his body cavity. Worse, Charlie is in love with strip club owner Renata (Connie Nielsen, made up and lit as a classic noir vixen) and he wants her to run away with him. She’s smart enough to know that he’s leaving town with lots and lots of money that doesn’t belong to him. The slinky, sexy Renata has Charlie wondering if she wants him, or his ill-gotten loot.

While the ice storm serves as a perfectly acceptable metaphor for how life takes us in unintended and unavoidable directions, I sure wish Vic and Charlie would have just driven really slowly out of town, or spent the night watching television. Sure there wouldn’t be a film, but at least they’d have avoided Roy (Mike Starr), Bill’s muscle man, whose been hunting down the pair all night.  Eventually, Roy winds up stuffed into a steamer trunk and driven out to a pier for immediate dispatch to Heaven. It was fun hearing Roy taunt the pair from his little trunk, powerless threats directed at two men whose evening has become so bizarre, it makes sense it would come to this. 

There is a movie rule that every crime caper involving two or more villains must have one villain turning on one of the other villains. So it is here, as Charlie comes to wonder if Vic is going to bump him off and take the money for himself (which just got me thinking that The Ice Harvest is the comedy version of Thornton’s A Simple Plan). Ramis wrings some tension out of this, but not enough. And “not enough” is the whole problem. The Ice Harvest is a nice movie, but there are not enough laughs, not enough tension, not enough character, not enough of that “I can’t believe they said that” cynicism that the movie wants credit for.  Co-written by, of all people, Kramer Vs. Kramer’s Robert Benton, it tries to balance absurdity with a human dimension. It winds up having not enough of either to really take off.

The Video: How Does The Disc Look?

The movie being reviewed here is the widescreen version. There is a full screen, whose purchase is ill advised. The movie takes place over the course of one evening, in dimly lit strip clubs and restaurants. So the 1.85:1 transfer really had its work cut out for it. I’m glad to report that Universal really delivered; this is a great effort. The crisp, icy blues have a pleasing dimensionality. Colors are fully saturated, but still have that moody edge. Contrast is pretty first rate. Blacks have been rendered with care and for the most part, they’re inky and even. It did annoy me, however, that John Cusack’s black suit looked crushed most of the time. Other than that, the blacks and the shadow detail were aces. This is a sharp picture, with good detail and excellent flesh tones. Watching this first-rate transfer made me dream of seeing the DVD in high-definition someday.

The Audio: How Does The Disc Sound?
 
The Dolby Digital 5.1 track is not the most ambitious mix, but it gets the job done nicely. The surrounds feature nice ambience that helps convey a sense of the ice-enshrouded darkness of a cold Wichita night. Detail is above average, especially in the restaurant scenes early on, with clanking glasses and multiple conversations. The dialogue, the most important consideration here, maintains clarity and detail even when characters whisper. Bass activity is minimal, but it does provide a good foundation for the mix. I especially liked how the deeper voices were rendered.

There is also a French Dolby Digital 5.1 track, and English, French, and Spanish subtitles.

Supplements: What Goodies Are There?

Sometimes a DVD just smells like a rental, from the quality of the film to the quantity and quality of its supplements. That’s the case here. The extras are very passable and kill time nicely. But there’s nothing that screams “buy me, don’t rent me.”

The big extra is the audio commentary by Harold Ramis. The Groundhog Day director has a very pleasing, conversational voice, so he’s fun to listen to. He remembers a lot of minutiae, including how every major actor was at least 6-feet tall (including Connie Nielsen), where scenes were shot, and how Nielsen said she based her character on Jessica Rabbit. An amiable commentary that’s good to dip in and out of once you’ve viewed the movie.

Next are two alternate endings. Both change the ultimate fate of the one of the characters. The second ending extends the scene, so the audience gets a sense of how the whole robbery idea came to pass. If a movie is going to be dark, I prefer it go all the way, so there’s a case to be made for using this ending. Still, I understand the demands of the marketplace, so I understand why they didn’t. Video quality is high workprint.

Outtake with Billy Bob Thornton is the actor playing a dinner scene with John Cusack in the voice of Karl, his Sling Blade character. It’s funny in an anachronistic way and I started counting how many times Cusack looked over at director Harold Ramis, presumably to see whether he ever planned on calling “cut.”

Cracking the Story is a 17-minute interview that takes place in a bar and features novelist Scott Phillips and screenwriters Robert Benton and Richard Russo. I was especially interested in why Benton signed on. I mean, this is the guy who wrote and directed Kramer vs. Kramer. Russo gives us a helpful list of attributes that make a book a good bet to be adapted into a movie. “. . . it’s very compact, there’s a distinct through-line to the narrative, it’s restricted in terms of time and space [and] lots happens.”

Beneath the Harvest is a typical EPK featurette, with Cusack, Thorton, Platt, and Ramis going off about what the movie means to them, why they shot in Chicago, not Wichita and why the world needs an evil Christmas movie. Ramis says he read the original novel only after committing to the project based on the script. There’s lots of on-set footage, which is nice to see, but otherwise, it’s standard fare.

Finally, there’s Cracking the Ice: Analysis of a Scene. Producers Ron Yerxa and Albert Berger, and director Harold Ramis explain how the climatic lake scene was created, from the construction of a 65-foot pier to the filming of the pier’s collapse. There’s footage of the safety meeting and an admission by Billy Bob Thornton that he has a deathly fear of water. “I can barely take a shower,” he says, quickly adding, “but I do it everyday.” It’s a decent six- minute piece.