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The Ice Harvest By David DiCerto Catholic News Service NEW YORK (CNS) -- What is it with Billy Bob Thornton and Christmas movies? In 2003, he starred in the raunchy "Bad Santa." Now he's back serving up sour eggnog in "The Ice Harvest" (Focus), a rancid black comedy in which he plays a sleazy character that makes his petulant shopping-mall Kris Kringle almost jolly by comparison. Based on Scott Phillip's mordant novel, with its action taking place all in one night, the movie pivots on a crooked Wichita lawyer (John Cusack) and his accomplice (Thornton) who embezzle $2 million from a local crime boss (Randy Quaid), but whose plans to skip town are stymied by a Christmas Eve ice storm and a series of double-crosses. In the seedy company of assorted mob leg-breakers (Mike Starr), strip-club femme fatales (Connie Nielsen) and foul-mouthed barflies (Oliver Platt), the ever-affable Cusack comes off as the default "good guy." Then again, the bar is set pretty low. Despite some pungent performances, director Harold Ramis deserves nothing but coal in his stocking for this misanthropic mix of barbed cynicism and sordid nastiness. The movie opens with Cusack surveying a cold and uninviting Kansas vista, an apropos visual metaphor for the morally empty harvest to follow. The film contains recurring bloody violence, several scenes in a strip club involving partial nudity, brief pornographic images, drunken recklessness, pervasive nihilism, vulgar and irreverent humor, excessive rough and crude language, as well as some profanity. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is O -- morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. - - - DiCerto is on the staff of the Office for Film & Broadcasting of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. END Copyright (c) 2005 Catholic News Service/USCCB. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed. CNS · 3211 Fourth St NE · Washington DC 20017 · 202.541.3250 |
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