Movie Review The Humbling

The Humbling (2015) 

Directed by Barry Levinson 

Written by Buck Henry 

Starring Al Pacino, Greta Gerwig, Dianne Wiest, Nina Arianda, Charles Grodin, Kyra Sedgwick 

Release Date January 23rd, 2015 

Published January 17th, 2015 

The crazed, narcissistic, sexist, ludicrousness of "The Humbling" almost needs to be seen to be believed. I say “almost” because I really don't want you to waste your precious time watching this dreadful movie. Al Pacino has been wandering in the cinematic woods for years now. While he surrounds himself with talented people in "The Humbling," each is defeated equally by the film. Based on the novel by Phillip Roth, "The Humbling" stars Al Pacino as washed-up actor Simon Axler. Simon is beginning to lose his mind. On stage one night, in front of a disinterested crowd, Simon takes a header into the orchestra pit and winds up in a mental institution. 

Despite his tendency to share his narcissistic rambling with anyone, the talking cure doesn't seem to be working. Nevertheless, after 30 days Simon heads back to his empty mansion in Connecticut to recuperate. There, Simon is joined inexplicably by Pegeen (Greta Gerwig). Pegeen explains that she is the daughter of Simon’s old acting friends. Because she had a crush on him when she was 11, she says, she'd like to give up being a lesbian and be with him. This is, despite his impoverished living situation, his inability to work, and the fact that he is 66 years old and slowly losing his mind.

Here, director Barry Levinson and Pacino might have found a believable direction for "The Humbling" if they they followed through on Pegeen being a figment of Simon's imagination. There is briefly a hint that she's not real and if that had been the direction of the story, maybe the film would not be completely horrible. Instead, the film doubles down on the Pegeen character, rendering her the picture of a sexist fantasy and feminist nightmares. With Pegeen comes a series of reductive caricatures of women including not one, but two, stalker ex-girlfriends. One of them (Billy Porter) is now a man. The other one  is Louise (Kyra Sedgwick), whom Pegeen claims to have slept with in order to get her job as a university professor. I really wish I was making all of this up, but I am not.

Pegeen's arrival at Simon's home is among the more bizarre series of scenes in any movie in 2014. Pegeen arrives, introduces herself and then angrily begins to explain who she is. Why is she angry? Apparently it’s because Simon gave her a ring when she was 11 years old and she thought it meant they were married. It's impossible to tell if this dialogue is meant as a joke, because Greta Gerwig plays the scene with a bizarre, haughty intensity that doesn't fit the scene if it is indeed intended as a joke. It probably should be funny but it is most certainly not. 

That scene somehow ends in a kiss between Pegeen and Simon which is as creepy and awkward as you would imagine between 66 year old Al Pacino and a much, much, much younger woman. Then Simon and Pegeen begin playing with a toy train. Again, all of this is played straight, as if nothing remarkable or unusual has happened. A lesbian has just switched gender preference to be with a man old enough to be her grandfather and now they are playing with toy trains. That sounds like someone describing a fever dream.

The Humbling somehow manages to get weirder and more repellent. "The Humbling" contains a subplot in which a woman named Sybil (Nina Arianda), whom Simon met while he was committed to the asylum, (funny joke, right? Sybil in a mental hospital), Sybil wants Simon to kill her husband. After Simon is released from the hospital, Sybil stalks him and continues to try to hire him to kill her husband. Why? Because in "The Humbling" all women are completely insane.

Oh, but wait dear reader, director Barry Levinson and writer Buck Henry  he film have a cop-out for all of this sexist bullshit on display: Simon is an unreliable narrator. Simon may be suffering from Alzheimer’s or a more simple form of age-related memory loss. As he narrates the story, he can't remember it well. He talks to Pegeen when she's not there. He may be inventing all of this story or none of it. "The Humbling" is a grand, disturbed, mess of a movie that inspires bafflement over those involved in its creation. The once great Levinson continues his 17-year run of terrible films and takes the once-great screenwriter Buck Henry down with him. Henry hadn't had a screenplay credit in 19 years (his sharp wit last crafted the Nicole Kidman movie "To Die For"). He should have remained retired.

Greta Gerwig, Kyra Sedgwick, Dianne Wiest, who plays Gerwig's mother in the film, and the wonderful Charles Grodin also get dragged down into the muck of Pacino's continuing decline. I can't imagine what each of these fine performers thought that they were getting into in "The Humbling," but I am sure they cannot be happy with the outcome. Repeatedly throughout the film, Simon goes meta and muses about how people only want to see him return to the stage to watch the freak, the car wreck in progress. I doubt Pacino recognizes this musing as a commentary on his own career. But indeed there is only that reason to watch a Pacino movie these days. I keep watching Pacino in part because it is my job and in part because I just don't think it can get any worse, and then it does.

"The Humbling" is the latest rock bottom for the once-great Pacino.

Movie Review The Hunger Games Mockingjay Pt 1

The Hunger Games Mockingjay Pt 1 (2014)

Directed by Francis Lawrence 

Written by Danny Strong and Peter Craig 

Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Josh Hutcherson, Liam Hemsworth, Woody Harrelson, Julianne Moore, Elizabeth Banks 

Release Date November 21st, 2014 

Published November 20th, 2014 

"The Hunger Games" could have been a revolutionary box office bonanza with a brain. Sadly, thanks to the greed of Lionsgate Pictures, it's become an ironic symbol of the greed that the film is meant to satirize. I’ve been told not to hold against "Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1" how it came to be a “part 1.” But I must. Because what could have been a deeply impactful 2 1/2- hour epic finale has been beefed up into a bloated, four-hour-plus time waster that won't play out in full for another year. There was the potential for greatness in the "Hunger Games" series. 

"The Hunger Games" arrived on the big screen at nearly the same moment as the Occupy Wall Street protests dominated the headlines. It wasn't by design, but it happened that the plot about the desperate poor spoiling for war with the ruling elite coincided with an all-too-brief cultural moment. Of course, Occupy Wall Street had neither the marketing muscle nor physical will of the "Hunger Games" hype -- I'm speaking more of a fashionable attitude for revolution rather than an actual revolution. 

"The Hunger Games" was never meant to galvanize a movement. Still,  Gary Ross's original had an unmistakable edge with its themes centered on the “haves” and “have nots.” The denizens of the Capitol, first glimpsed in "The Hunger Games," are the picture of grotesqueness: Loud, proud fools adorned in their riches, flaunting everything in front of those who arrive with nothing. Those who arrive with nothing include our heroes, Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) and Peeta (Josh Hutcherson). 

Sport fighting the poor for the amusement of the rich has a historic flavor to it – think “Christians and the lions.” While our modern society hasn't devolved to that point, who hasn't heard someone compare America to ancient Rome? The rich under-girding of the first "Hunger Games" is the potential for class warfare and why such warfare is justified. The second film, "Catching Fire," doesn't carry the metaphor as strongly. While Katniss is used as agitprop for the Capitol, we're left with a story about the games and not the people in them. Simply getting Katniss and Peeta to the arena seems to be that film’s goal, and the journey is a bit of a drudge. 

"Mockingjay - Part 1," on the other hand, goes too far back the other way. Katniss, now the agitprop of the revolution, spends the film mourning the poor and the dead in the class warfare that she inspired. The film fails to take flight as an adventure movie without the propulsive effect of the games. This isn’t because director Francis Lawrence is incapable, but because he's been handcuffed to two movies instead of a single film. 

"Mockingjay" should have been written as a thrill-ride epic, a finale that combined tears and compassion with the kind of rollicking rebellion the series should have built toward. 

What should be a whipsaw ride of emotion, excitement and catharsis is instead an exhausting, 2-year trudge to an overstuffed conclusion. What a shame. Commerce has defeated art in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1." While Katniss weeps for the districts, I weep for wasted opportunity for greatness. 

Movie Review: The Hunted

The Hunted (2003) 

Directed by William Friedkin 

Written by David Griffiths, Peter Griffiths, Art Monterastelli 

Starring Benicio Del Toro, Tommy Lee Jones, Connie Nielsen 

Release Date March 14th, 2003 

Published March 13th, 2003 

Director William Friedkin, the action director best known for the Oscar winner The French Connection is back with yet another great chase movie. In The Hunted, Friedkin teams fellow Oscar winners Benicio Del Toro and Tommy Lee Jones in a one on one, mano e mano, chase movie that is remarkable for its economy of characters and lack of special effects. Hand to hand combat in movies usually involves some form of martial arts. In The Hunted, a hand to hand knife fight is the central scene and the combat feels raw and exciting. 

In The Hunted Del Toro plays Aron Hallem, a Special Forces soldier that we are introduced to as he and his unit infiltrate a Serbian incursion in Albania. Incursion is merely a kinder term for genocidal slaughtering as Aron is witness to horrible atrocities including children being forced to watch their parents killed then be killed themselves. Despite the atrocities, Aron sticks to his mission, which is to kill the commander of the Serbian forces, which he does as coldly and efficiently as one might gut a fish. Back in the States, Aron is awarded the Medal of Honor for combat bravery. However, in his quiet moments, Aron is tormented by the atrocities that he could not prevent.

Parallel to Aron's story is that of his mentor, a survivalist named L.T. Bonham (Tommy Lee Jones). Though Bonham is not a military man, he was contracted years ago to teach special forces officers how to kill in cold blood. Working off his debt of conscience in British Columbia, Bonham rebuilds his karma protecting wildlife from trappers. Meanwhile Aron, back in the States, is also into wildlife but to more of an extreme as we watch him slice up a pair of goofy looking, orange vest and camouflage wearing hunters. 

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media

Movie Review The Hunting Party

The Hunting Party (2007) 

Directed by Richard Shepard 

Written by Richard Shepard 

Starring Richard Gere, Terrence Howard, Jesse Eisenberg, Diane Kruger, James Brolin, Dylan Baker 

Release Date September 14th, 2007 

Published September 13th, 2007 

Do you remember the so-called "Scud Stud"? His real name was Arthur Kent and for the uninitiated Kent was the undisputed media star of the first Iraq war. Standing against a starry Baghdad sky with missile alarms in the background and explosions not far out of the frame, Kent's handsome, steely veneer and unshakable calm was the enduring media image of the war, even beyond the deified danger boys over at CNN, probably because Bernard Shaw just isn't as pleasant to look at. Desert Storm was the peak of Arthur Kent's career. He failed in his attempt to get a massive new deal with NBC, his arrogance pricing him out of a market that already had its share of pampered divas.

Kent has since carved out a respectable career in documentaries and hosting specials on the History Channel, but he will always be the Scud Stud. The new movie The Hunting Party is a movie about a journalist not unlike Mr. Kent. The roguishly handsome, globetrotter played by Richard Gere flames out more spectacularly than Kent did, after becoming the star of the forgotten 90's conflict in Bosnia. Now a shell of the journalist he once was, he stumbles on the opportunity to regain his fortune. With the help of his trusted cameraman, played by Terrence Howard, he's going to capture the world's most wanted terrorist. If only Arthur Kent had flipped this badly, imagine The Scud Stud trying to hunt down Saddam Hussein. 

Richard Gere is perfectly cast in The Hunting Party as Simon, a man who became a media darling for his daring coverage of the Bosnian conflict. With his trusty cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard), Simon wasn't afraid to go into the fire fight if it meant getting great visuals and a great story to tell. A diva on the air and off, Simon basked in worldwide fame and its trappings, mostly in Serbian bars with beautiful Serbian women on each arm and a drink in every hand. Then, as the conflict worsened and the genocide became clearer, Simon snapped. During a live network shot from an ethnically cleansed village where bodies still burned, Simon uttered words that no one can utter on television.

He was fired immediately and began a spiraling descent, shooting and selling his own reports to tiny nations' state TV networks. Meanwhile, Duck got promoted right out of Bosnia, into a cushy gig in New York. He didn't see Simon again for nearly a decade when networks returned to Bosnia to celebrate ten years of a peace accord. Simon hasn't been heard of, even on state TV, in a few years but he too has returned and he has a story that Duck cannot resist. Simon knows where an infamous Bosnian terror leader is hiding and that though the CIA and the United Nations are supposed to be chasing him, they are in fact helping to hide him away.

With Duck and a young producer, Benjamin (Jesse Eisenberg), in tow, Simon makes the journey into terrorist controlled territory for what Duck and Ben thinks will be the interview of a lifetime but is really Simon's last shot at glory. Simon intends to capture the terrorist and expose the hypocrisy of the system that protected him for a decade. Hiding this fact from Duck and Benjamin, the story turns on whether this is Simon's quest for redemption or merely an arrogant and dangerous ploy from an egomaniac grasping at straws. 

Written and directed by Richard Shepard, who crafted the modestly brilliant The Matador in 2006, The Hunting Party is based on the true story of several international journalists who did in fact seek out and find Bosnian war criminals who were being squirreled away by international politicians who would rather sweep the genocide under the rug than go to the trouble of an international trial. The main character is an American because The Hunting Party was made by Americans for Americans. That is a little insulting but nothing new from a Hollywood that has never trusted the audience to simply enjoy a well told story regardless of the nation of origin.

My cynicism about Hollywood aside, Richard Gere is the perfect actor to play Simon. Playing the crusading journalist or the pretty boy egotist, Gere wears this character like an old suit and his comfort is a comfort to us. Effortlessly charismatic, few actors hold the screen as well as Gere. The weak link here, surprisingly, is Terrence Howard who may be falling victim to Kevin Spacey syndrome. Ever since his breakthrough Oscar nomination for Hustle and Flow, Howard seems to be over-serious in every role. Whether it's the swim coach in Pride who seems constantly on the verge of tears or his the social worker of August Rush who also seems on the verge of tears, Howard is straining to bring a little extra drama to every role. In The Hunting Party, Howard is only slightly less weepy. 

The role of Duck calls for hard bitten manliness crossed with slightly over the hill cynicism. Howard tries to play that idea but then strains things to the point of once again seeming on the verge of tears. The same struggle has swallowed the career of Kevin Spacey who now plays every role with dewy eyes. It's a shame because the character of Duck is a vital cog in the machinery of The Hunting Party and without him the film goes from exciting to adequate and from thrilling to modestly compelling. This is a good story, well told by director Richard Shepard and terrific by Richard Gere but it only gets a partial recommendation because Howard fumbles his important role.

Movie Review The Hurt Locker

The Hurt Locker (2009) 

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow 

Written by Mark Boal 

Starring Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty, Evangeline Lilly, Ralph Fiennes, Guy Pearce 

Release Date June 26th, 2009 

Published June 25th, 2009 

The Hurt Locker is the most intense, breathtaking moviegoing experience of my critical career. I have had some movies really grind me into my seat but few do so as compellingly as The Hurt Locker, an Iraq war drama that avoids nearly all of the pitfalls of the myriad Iraq war movies of the past five years.

Lost in a sea of muddled agendas and fearful pandering, movies about the Iraq war have never taken hold within the culture the way movies like All Quiet On the Western Front or Patton did for World War 2 or Platoon and Full Metal Jacket did for Vietnam. Hell, even Rambo managed to be both an audience grabber and a commentary on Vietnam.

No such luck for movies like Jarhead or Stop-Loss. Each a well made, well intentioned movie, but movies at a loss to capture this elusive and ill-defined conflict in the middle east. Each attempts to be about soldiers and their real life struggles and each fails for lack of conviction and an inability to draw a line between anti-war agendizing and dramatizing the real struggles of their characters.

Now comes The Hurt Locker a film that sidesteps agendizing through the luck of timing and a smart specificity. The luck of timing comes in being released at a time when the conflict has receded from the headlines and is no longer the burning hot lightning rod it once was. The specificity comes from the focus on a set of very specific, very unique soldiers, the men in the business of bomb disposal.

Jeremy Renner stars in The Hurt Locker as Lt. Willam James. On his third tour, James claims to have disposed of more than 800 bombs and he keeps coming back for more. Whether he is addicted to adrenaline or has a serious death wish, William is the best at what he does and his seeming recklessness is arguably what has kept him alive. He makes decisions that others don't have the guts to make.

Joining William on this tour is Sgt. JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) a bomb tech in duty only, he has yet to raise the nerve to don the protective suit and walk up to the bomb. And Specialist Owen Eldridge, a skittish youngster who remains tortured by all he's seen.

Together they are fighting through the last 100 days of what will hopefully, for Sanborn and Eldridge anyway, be a last tour. Each day brings a seemingly more dangerous and even larger bomb and the tension released at the end of the day is something akin to a constant stream of adrenalin that never shuts off.

Director Katherine Bigelow chooses a pseudo-documentary style of shooting that amps the tension even more. The digital cameras and limited angles draw the audience right into the danger. You will be surprised to learn that The Hurt Locker recorded more footage than even Coppola's epic Apocalypse Now and yet, what is onscreen is so tense and tight it seems of a moment, in the moment.

You have seen bombs and even bomb disposal in movies before and you have certainly seen the horrors of war before. But, there is something in the style of Director Bigelow and the intensity of Jeremy Renner's performance that sets it apart, and above so many other war movies.

Much of that comes from the scripting of Mark Boal who researched The Hurt Locker as an embedded journalist for Playboy Magazine. Traveling with and witnessing what bomb techs do in Iraq gave Boal a unique and thorough perspective on these very particular men and their job.

The Hurt Locker is a visceral, physical, filmgoing experience that will have you twisting in your seat, holding your breath and begging for the air to come back into the room. It is a fierce and ferocious film that will leave you spent by the end. The walk from the theater is likely to be a somber one, but with the reward being a movie experience like few others.

Moving, exciting, exhilarating and enthralling, The Hurt Locker is among the best movies of the year.

Movie Review The Hustle

The Hustle (2019) 

Directed by Chris Addison 

Written by Stanley Shapiro, Paul Henning, Dale Launer, Jac Schaeffer 

Starring Anne Hathaway, Rebel Wilson, Alex Sharp 

Release Date March 10th, 2019

Published March 9th, 2019 

The Hustle is a remake of 1988’s Dirty Rotten Scoundrels starring Steve Martin and Michael Caine. Scoundrels itself was a remake of 1964’s Bedtime Story starring Marlon Brando and David Niven. So yeah, this material has been traversed on multiple occasions and that’s not even accounting for the numerous movies that Bedtime Story was heavily influenced by. Con artists have long been figures of fascination at the movies as they provide a rich playing field for actors and screenwriters alike. 

The Hustle stars Rebel Wilson, Pitch Perfect’s Amy, as Penny, a boorish Australian con artist who uses a scam involving a sick sister, and a little bit of catfishing, to get men to give her the little amounts of money she needs to get by. It’s small potatoes and when she’s seemingly run low on gullible Tinder dates, she decides to give Europe a shot. Penny is headed to the French Riviera in hopes of finding a bigger game for her cons. 

On a train to a place called Beaumont Del Sur, Penny meets Josephine (Anne Hathaway), a fellow con-artist, though Penny doesn’t know that yet. Josephine has set up shop in Beaumont Del Sur for years, using its lavish, expensive hotels as her hunting ground for rich husbands looking for a good time on the sly from unwitting elderly wives. Josephine isn’t worried that Penny will provide competition, she’s worried that her clumsiness will scare away the bigger fish marks. 

When Penny proves herself to be a little more formidable than expected, Josephine takes her in and begins to teach Penny about higher level cons. A con-job, codenamed Lord of the Rings, is the centerpiece of this early portion of the second act and I really enjoyed it. All three movies, Bedtime Story, Scoundrels and The Hustle, feature this sequence and it proves to be a durable comic sequence, earning some unexpectedly big laughs. 

Unexpected laughs are a hallmark of The Hustle. The disjointed narrative of The Hustle, a series of setups and payoffs with a bare minimum of connective story tissue, works in spite of the structure. The laughs are so big and so often that I actually didn’t mind the obvious flaws in the structure. I somehow didn’t mind that The Hustle isn’t much of a traditional movie and is rather a series of gags, skillfully performed by the talented duo of Wilson and Hathaway. 

On most occasions a movie as faltering in structure as The Hustle would not work for me but I have a notable soft spot for Rebel Wilson. Few people in Hollywood make me laugh as hard as Wilson, who has become one of the most remarkably ingenious comedians on the planet in recent years. Her Isn’t it Romantic from back in February of this year remains one of the highlights of 2019 at the movies and Wilson makes it impossible for me to dislike The Hustle or dismiss it over some very noticeable flaws. 

Those specific flaws are embodied in the character of Thomas played by newcomer Alex Sharp. Sharp is central to the film’s third act and he’s completely overmatched in attempting to keep up with Wilson’s brilliant comic chops and Hathaway’s skillfully light touch comedy. I get that this part requires a performer who appears at a loss consistently opposite the brilliant cons on either side of them, but Sharp is an almost non-existent presence. Those who’ve seen Dirty Rotten Scoundrels know where his character arc is headed and I will tell you, Glenn Headly struggled to pull it off in Scoundrels and Sharp doesn’t even compare to her. 

The Hustle was directed by Veep veteran, Chris Addison. Addison has demonstrated a strong talent for gags on Veep and he shows that same flare for setup and punchline in The Hustle. The Hustle unfortunately doesn't have the advantage of being a weekly television series that can more simply perform setup and punchline and pick up narrative strands as needed. Characters have time to grow and for us to get to know them on television. The Hustle doesn’t have time to develop these characters or a deeper narrative, which necessitates the reliance on big gags over what makes movies great.

That said, the laughs in The Hustle are often so big that I can’t pretend I didn’t enjoy it. I can levy a number of complaints about the film, but what matters is that I laughed and laughed loudly and quite often at The Hustle. I can’t say my fellow critics who don’t care for The Hustle are wrong about the movie, they are right in many instances and complaints. I just happen to be in a position to be a great deal more kind about The Hustle due to my adoration for Rebel Wilson. 

Lower your expectations of an actual movie and get set for some funny set pieces and you can enjoy The Hustle as much as I did. 

Movie Review The Ice Harvest

The Ice Harvest (2005) 

Directed by Harold Ramis 

Written by Richard Russo, Robert Benton 

Starring John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Connie Nielsen, Randy Quaid, Oliver Platt 

Release Date November 23rd, 2005 

Published November 22nd, 2005 

Director Harold Ramis is best known for lighthearted comedy with an edgy intellect. His best work, 1993's Groundhog's Day, is such a true gem of a film that its polish has only shined brighter in the years subsequent to its release. Most credit for that film goes to Bill Murray's complex curmudgeonly existential performance. But, behind that performance was Ramis' sly, sneaky direction that played games with the audience that many did not discover until years later.

Even in lesser efforts like Analyze This and Analyze That, Ramis has at least delivered moments of pithy intellect and sly commentary. Ramis' latest effort Ice Harvest is nothing like anything he's directed before. A black hearted comic noir so thick with dark irony and detached violence one wonders if a late night cocktail of Pulp Fiction and Fargo somehow festered in Harold Ramis' dreams.

John Cusack stars in Ice Harvest as Charlie Arglist, a low level midwestern mob lawyer whose job seems to be holding down bar stools in mob controlled strip clubs. Charlie had never shown an ounce of ambition until a mobster named Vic (Billy Bob Thornton) convinced him to lift two million dollars in mob money from a local bank.

Getting the money was easy, now Charlie simply has to get out of Wichita. Unfortunately that will have to wait until morning as the entire town is nearly shut down due to an ice storm. Vic also has a few loose ends to tie up before they can go, including his soon to be ex-wife and a mobster, Roy (Mike Starr), who has discovered Vic and Charlie's scam.

Charlie is not simply waiting out the storm either. He is hiding from Roy while being seduced by Renata (Connie Neilsen), the manager of one the many strip clubs Charlie frequents, who is well aware of the money Vic and Charlie stole and has an eye on joining them in their getaway. Before Charlie can close that deal however, there is the matter of his best friend, Pete (Oliver Platt), who has chosen this night to get record-breakingly drunk and only Charlie can help him get home.

Pete happens to be married to Charlie's ex-wife which leads to an awkwardly humorous scene where Pete confronts his wife's growing dissatisfaction with their marriage in the midst of Christmas dinner at her parents house as Charlie stands by saying goodbye to his young daughter and unhappy son who he never sees. Platt is very funny in the scene but his plot really has little or any relation to the rest of the movie.

The rest of the film is full of double and triple crosses, bodies pile up high and all the while director Harold Ramis and writers Richard Russo and Robert Benton can't decide if they are making a dark comedy or a modern noir. Cusack's performance is, for the most part, dark comedy. Charlie assesses every plot development with a cowardly paranoia and suspicion that makes him the butt of every joke and the comic victim of every other character in the film.

In fact most of the cast is playing dark comedy. Thornton plays it cool for the most part but then there is the scene, featured prominently in the films trailer, where he has stuffed Roy in a trunk and comically beats it with a golf club which is straight slapstick. This is followed by a funny exchange in the car on the way to dump the body as Roy, in the box, attempts to save his life by convincing Charlie that Vic is going to kill him too and run off with all the money. The scene is funny but nothing after it is and much of what comes before it is unamusing as well.

As Cusack, Thornton, Platt and Starr are all playing dark comic riffs, Ramis is directing a bleak, mean spirited and violent Coen brothers' style anti-thriller with Neilsen's femme fatale and Randy Quaid's mob boss clearly not in on the rest of the cast's joke. The film shifts uncomfortably from ugly violence to black comedy, never able to incorporate the two in a way that makes both work.

Ice Harvest is shot as confusingly as it is plotted. Certain scenes have the bleak grays and blacks and dark colors of a noir mystery right down the rascotro lighting. Other scenes feature the bright colors and slick styling of any major mainstream comedy. A scene of Charlie standing in the empty frozen tundra of a Kansas highway is straight noir but the scenes between Cusack and Oliver Platt are from a dysfunctional holiday comedy filled with brightly decorated Christmas items. The shooting further muddies the line between the film's noir and dark comic intentions.

John Cusack does find a way to make his hapless loser Charlie work in terms of winning the audience to his side. Even as Charlie engages in some of the bad behavior in the film he retains an air of detached observation. With every dark development Charlie rarely gets riled up, he merely rubs his eyes in frustration and gets down to the distasteful business of surviving this one extraordinarily difficult night.

Oliver Platt's performance is equally as winning as Cusack's. The two actors spark a terrific chemistry in the few scenes they have together. Despite his oafish and even rude actions, Platt's sad sack Pete is very sympathetic in his sad drunken way. Had the film been able to straighten out the problems with its tone Platt and Cusack's performances alone could have made Ice Harvest a worthy effort.

It's not that dark comedy and modern noir are mutually exclusive genres.  It's just a difficult balancing act to make the two elements work together. Fargo, for example, works on both levels because of its exceptional cast and the assured direction of the Coen brothers. Ice Harvest director Harold Ramis is unable to find the balance between the comic performances of his cast and the dark action script.

Ramis wants to escape his reputation as a director of light comedy and indulge his dark side but his comic instincts are uncontrollable and express themselves in the direction of his actors. Ramis clearly wants to indulge his dark side in Ice Harvest but he cannot quiet his crowd pleasing instincts. After years of light, entertaining comedies, Ramis is very in tune to giving the audience the simple pleasures that most seek. Ice Harvest is not a film as a whole that can or should give audiences what they want.

The film's happy ending underscores my point. Watching Charlie escape with the money, and with his pal Pete, I could feel the gears turning as Ramis attempted to please the audience with a pseudo-happy ending. But what did Charlie do to deserve a happy ending? Granted that both Cusack and Platt are very good together and earn our sympathy, their plot is from an entirely different movie. Charlie still did a lot of unforgivable things and punishing him in a darkly ironic way would have been a more appropriate ending.

With a cast this talented Ice Harvest should be far more entertaining than it is. The failure lies with Ramis who, whether unwilling or unable, cannot find a way to mix his comic instincts with this black-hearted script. The result is a mixed bag of darkly humorous moments and awkward modern noir violence. John Cusack delivers a dead-on performance but the film lets him down and more importantly it lets the audience down.