The Iceman is an arty film about Richard Kuklinski, one of the most ruthless contract killers for the mob in the 60s-80s. In the riveting documentary on him, which this film is partially based, he claims to have killed over 200 people. Diagnosed with paranoid antisocial personality disorder, Dr. Park Dietz diagnosed him as a rare combination of genetics and environment that made him a remorseless and emotionless killing machine. He got his nickname The Iceman by freezing the corpses of some of his victims in a freezer to throw off their time of death to police coroners. Kuklinski has also been the subject of at least two other HBO documentaries that detail his life and crimes. He died in Trenton Maximum Security Prison in 2007.
So while the man was interesting, how was the movie? In a word, jumbled. First, the movie boasts a slate of A-List stars including Winona Ryder, James Franco, Chris Evans, Ray Liotta, Stephen Dorrif and David Schwimmer. But Kuklinski himself is portrayed by Michael Shannon, the man most famous for his intense portrayal of Agent Nelson Van Alden on Boardwalk Empire. The movie, like so many others of this type, tries to humanize an otherwise incredibly evil man. In some cases, I think it is trying to make us feel sorrow or pity for him. Brought up in a household of systematic abuse as a child and then showing us he was a devoted family man with two daughters and a wife, the film tries to tug at our heart strings at times to make us sympathize with him. Yet curiously, the movie is absolutely unapologetic for his crimes. If half of what he said on the documentary is true, the movie doesn't hold a candle to his true exploits. This makes the movie is a cut above mere exploitation. It is not here to glamorize or sensationalize his crimes, but rather says this is what happened and you make up your own mind what you think about him. This see-sawing of tone, however, was also a little off-putting and always kept me a bit detached from the story.
The other part that was a tad confusing was all the backstory. There are events going on in the mob that criss cross into Kuklinski's life that have large impacts on him, but hey move in and out so randomly, it is hard to make sense of the second half of the film. Is this a movie about the mob or one particularly gruesome individual in it? The first half is biopic, the second half, a jumbled miasma that in the end doesn't make a lot of sense. This may have been a victim of post-production cutting, and it shows. It takes what could have been a great mob movie or biopic and made only a fair example of both. It has received some interesting accolades already. The director, Ariel Vromen won the 2012 Capri Breakout Director award, and it was an official selection at the Venice, Teluride and Toronto Film Festivals. It is worth a watch, if only to see Ray Liotta as a tough guy again or David Schwimmer as a weasley, slimy scumball.
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