|
88 MINUTES | BOSTON COMMON + FENWAY + KENDALL SQUARE + CHESTNUT HILL + SUBURBS No holiday season would be complete without its misanthropic black comedy or thriller. Last year it was the dim Lemony Snicket, the year before the brilliant Bad Santa. Santa’s Billy Bob Thornton brings his dyspeptic nihilism to a supporting role in Harold Ramis’s The Ice Harvest, which has its rueful pleasures. He’s Vic, accomplice to Charlie (John Cusack) in lifting $2 million from Wichita crime boss Bill (Randy Quaid). Like all the men in this movie, Vic is venal, treacherous, and devoid of all virtue. And as for the women, one being strip-club proprietor Renata (Connie Nielsen) — well, let’s hope the misogyny is meant ironically. So expect things to turn out the way they might in a Coen Brothers movie like Blood Simple or Fargo, but not as well. Laughs brighten the stretches of frost, especially the crude physical comedy of Oliver Pratt. And of course there’s the eternal question: "What kind of man shoots his wife in the back of the head on Christmas Eve?" In The Ice Harvest, what kind doesn’t?
BY PETER KEOUGH
|
