Wick's Review

Summary - Great 4.0

Pity The Iceman – the movie, not the Mafia hitman. Great mob movies are broadly treasured, even more when they’re about real guys who committed real crimes. And yet this one has flown under the radar.

Six-four, with big Polish hands, the Iceman could take anybody and often did, mostly under orders, for money. Half sociopath, half family man, he killed over 100 for the Gambinos and other real life Sopranos.

Richie – the Iceman – was a legitimate serial killer given his triple digit roster of victims, even if the movie shows him evincing no joy from killing, no sensory satisfaction at all. The money. He killed for the money, though he also killed occasionally for spite. Some shithead would say the wrong thing about one of his girls, first his girlfriend and later wife, then their daughters — and then there would be hell to pay.

Michael Shannon brings Richard Kuklinski to something approximating life, playing him like an upwardly mobile Frankenstein. Winona Ryder convincingly plays a pretty Jersey girl, who grows into a Real Housewife of New Jersey and bears him two very pretty daughters.

Little did his gorgeous girls know that Daddy went from porn to whackjobs. Times were good. Why ask?

Read Kuklinski’s Wikipedia bio before watching the movie. Maybe the filmmakers teed up the wikifacts, but the movie dramatizes most of it, much of it hair-raising and full of wild shit. For instance, he was called the Iceman because he froze the corpses of his hits to obfuscate their time of death. Not enough? He often killed with cyanide instead of physical methods – quiet and hard to trace.

The Iceman masterfully brings this true story to life, albeit in resolutely downbeat fashion given the quantity and magnitude of the Iceman’s crimes. Fans of fanciful serial-killer fare like Dexter or The Following will find The Iceman to be the real deal, fantasy not needed.

Acting - Great 4.0

Michael Shannon has long since been a great movie actor, here carrying a movie largely himself. It’s an odd performance, largely internal from an actor we associate with volubility. Taking it on faith that the real Kuklinski was a reticent guy, then Shannon deserves huge credit for essaying him accurately.

Winona Ryder has created a niche for herself as a supporting actress (though I’m grading her as a Star here). Her trademark fragile beauty and airy demeanor are perfect for the role of suburban woman who doesn’t ask too many questions so long as her man brings home the bacon and is a loving partner.

Ray Liotta delivers another meaty mafioso, here as real life Gambino crew chief Roy Demeo. Nobody does it better, with his Roy Demeo going into the Liotta pantheon along with his thuggish boyfriend from Something Wild and his classic Henry Hill from Goodfellas.

The large and impressive supporting cast includes several big names.

• Chris Evans as Mr. Freezy, a fellow real-life hitman who drove an ice-cream truck as a cover. Evans is a long way from Captain America here.
• David Schwimmer as Demeo soldier Josh Rosenthal, another real-life character who ends up causing too much trouble for himself and his boss.
• Robert Davi as a Gambino elder. Davi and Liotta working together is mob movie heaven.
• John Ventimiglia as another Demeo soldier. Ventimigilia will be familiar to Sopranos fans as Artie Bucco, the great Italian chef.
• James Franco as a creep who gets in over his head with the mob.
• Stephen Dorff as Kuklinski’s brother, a murderer who’s even sicker than his serial killing sibling.

Separate from the above creeps are McKaley Miller and Megan Sherrill, two child stars playing Kuklinski’s daughters. Pretty and affecting, they have bright futures if they can avoid Hollywood’s traps.

Film - Great 4.0

Terrific Mafia films don’t often emerge from unknown directors, even more so when they’re based on a real-life story, outrageous though it may be. Ariel Vroman, take a bow. Along with writing collaborator Morgan Land, he’s made a film that shines a light on an important chapter of Organized Crime.

The similarities to The Sopranos are striking, albeit The Iceman is true, or at least truthy. Both are about ruthless New Jersey Mobsters who nonetheless maintain relatively normal home lives. In the Iceman’s case, his wife and daughters were willing to tolerate occasional wild outbursts so long as he was loving towards them while funding their upwardly mobile lifestyle.

The film does take a few well placed shots at that acquisitive lifestyle, painting Mr. & Mrs. Kuklinski as morally deficient consumers on top of his deeper failings.

Edge - Sordid 3.4

Kuklinksi killed 100 people in real life, with perhaps a dozen of those realistically dramatized in the movie. That said, it’s not much more extreme than what’s shown on cable crime dramas these days.

Reality - Glib 1.2

The tie-ins with the Sopranos are significant, beyond the normal/sociopath duality described in the Film commentary above. Roy Demeo (played by Ray Liotta) was part of the DeCavalcante crime family, the model for the fictional DiMeo crime family on the HBO series.

Finally, Kuklinski is one of two men who each claimed to have killed Jimmy Hoffa, per his Wikipedia page. Now that’s a claim to fame.

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