The Movie:

Directed by Ariel Vroman in 2012, The Iceman attempts to cover the life and times of infamous contract killer Richard Kuklinski, a man reportedly responsible for over one hundred killings between 1948 and 1986. Inspired by a book written about Kuklinski and by the HBO documentaries The Iceman Tapes, the feature crams a whole lot of living into an hour and forty five minute long feature. As such, it definitely skips over some parts of Kuklinski's life and leaves out large chunks of his story. However, this is a feature film and not a documentary series and evaluated on its own merits as entertainment, The Iceman turns out to be a pretty solid true crime thriller.

When the movie begins in the 1960s, a strong, silent type named Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon) has just convinced a pretty young woman Deborah (Winona Ryder) to meet him for coffee. They talk and she asks about the tattoo on his hand, a grim reaper. He tells her he got it because he was trying to be tough. Before you know it, they're married and living in a small low-rent apartment in New Jersey, across the river from Manhattan. Richard tells everyone he makes a living dubbing cartoons but in reality, he's working as a technician at a film lab that handles porno movies. He's working there late one night when a mobster named Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta) shows up. He's not happy that the goods he needed for this customers aren't ready and his men rough Kuklinski up a bit. Impressed by the cold hearted nature he sees, Demeo arranges a meeting with Kuklinski the next day and after a test of his disposition, he brings him onboard as an enforcer and a hitman.

Before you know it, Kuklinski is rising up the ranks. He's making great money and bought a nice house, he's even fathered two kids with his wife. He tells everyone he's working as a currency exchange banker and most, including his wife, are none the wiser. He's soon got a reputation as one of the best in the business but things get complicated when his relationship with Demeo becomes strained and he has to team up with a loose nut named Mr. Freezy (Chris Evans). As his career starts to slip, the wall he's put up between his personal life and his professional life begins to crumble…

The main problem with this movie is one that's hard to avoid, and that's just how rushed it all feels. We don't meet Kuklinski until he's a grown man and outside of a quick conversation with his incarcerated brother, we learn very little about his background. As such, we don't understand his drive to kill. It's easy enough to just label him a psychotic and be done with it but what made The Iceman Tapes so chilling was how the real life Kuklinksi went into detail about events from his childhood shaped him. In fact, he claimed to have made his first kill as a teenager and the fact that the movie doesn't touch on this means that our central character has no backstory and this absolutely hurts the movie. The movie also jumps over large chunks of Kuklinski's life, chiefly because it's working to stay within the confines of an average length feature movie, but because of this it feels rushed.

So does the movie feature any redeeming qualities? Absolutely. What's here is handled well and the performances are very good. Shannon has got a pretty heavy screen presence even in lighter roles and here he uses his size and his intimidating looks very well. He comes across as a scary guy, you wouldn't want to mess with him and even in the moments he shares with his family, the only thing in the world he cares about, there's distance and coldness where there should be warmth. Ryder is also quite good as his wife, one of the only legitimately sympathetic characters in the movie. The fact that she looks frail and small beside him means we instantly fear for her once we realize who he really is, but even beyond the physicality of things there is one key moments the two share where she nails it (without going into spoilers, let's just say it happens in the kitchen). Supporting efforts from Ray Liotta and Chris Evans are also both very good, if Liotta isn't really stretching as an actor here he's good at playing mobsters and Evans actually gives of an impressive feeling of perversity with his performance. Cameos from James Franco and Stephen Dorff are fine if unremarkable while David Schwimmer of all people is surprisingly good as one of Demeo's associates.

The movie does a pretty good job with the period detail and location photography. The shots that show the pre-9/11 World Trade Center in the background don't stand out as artificial and the production team does a good job of recreating the wardrobes and fashions as the film spans the decades. There are some shots where the aging makeup applied to Shannon is obviously just that, but thankfully these are few and far between. Ultimately this is a pretty entertaining movie and definitely worth a watch for those with an interesting in the material. Just go in expecting that, a movie, and not the definitive statement on Kuklinski or a particularly comprehensive telling of his complete life's story.

Video:

The Iceman arrives on Blu-ray in a 1.85.1 widescreen presentation with AVC encoding in 1080p high definition. Detail is pretty good here, as you'd expect from such a recent picture. The movie has had some very obvious color tweaking done, things always look on the bleak side and while this suits the tone of the movie just fine, it doesn't result in a lot of pop in terms of the transfer. With that said, that's how the movie is intended to look. As to the transfer itself, black levels are good, skin tones look pretty lifelike and never waxy and there are no problems with compression artifacts to note. Close up shots reveal nice detail in faces and texture is generally very good as well, you'll notice this in the clothing most of all (those sixties and seventies fashions are good for this type of thing!). There are no issues with edge enhancement or noise reduction and all in all this is a clean, well defined image and the transfer does a nice job of replicating a very grim looking source.