{"id":226,"date":"2005-11-25T05:26:08","date_gmt":"2005-11-25T10:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=226"},"modified":"2005-12-19T18:29:43","modified_gmt":"2005-12-19T23:29:43","slug":"the-ice-harvest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=226","title":{"rendered":"The Ice Harvest"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In 1997 I was delighted by <cite>Grosse Point Blank<\/cite>, John<br \/>\nCusack&#8217;s masterpiece about a hitman who finds himself (in both senses<br \/>\nof the phrase) at his high-school reunion.  I loved that movie for its<br \/>\naction, its dark comedy, and a script that never stopped being<br \/>\nwickedly intelligent for even a second.  I&#8217;ve been waiting nearly ten<br \/>\nyears for Cusack to do a movie as funny and as plain damn<br \/>\n<em>good<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><cite>Ice Harvest<\/cite> is not quite that movie, but it will do<br \/>\nnicely until one comes along.  Cusack&#8217;s character, Charlie Arglist, is<br \/>\na mob lawyer who has connived with a co-worker to steal two million<br \/>\ndollars from their boss, the crimelord who owns the underside of<br \/>\nWichita, Kansas.  As the movie opens it is an icy Christmas Eve; the<br \/>\ntwo have bagged the money and plan to split for the tropics in the<br \/>\nmorning when the roads are passable.  The boss seems blissfully<br \/>\nignorant that he&#8217;s been ripped off.  All Charlie has to do until the<br \/>\nroads clear is&#8230;act normal.<\/p>\n<p>But it&#8217;s Christmas Eve.  Charlie has a million dollars in the bag.<br \/>\nHe&#8217;s about to get out of town, leave behind the tag ends of a messy<br \/>\ndivorce and a dead-end life of booze and strip clubs, about to<br \/>\nreinvent himself.  He figures he&#8217;ll spend his last night in Wichita<br \/>\nbeing nice to his friends.<\/p>\n<p>But for Charlie, nice is not normal.  His belated attempt to behave<br \/>\nlike a decent human being combines with his perfect heist in a way<br \/>\nthat tangles him up in a web of deceit, betrayals and violence worthy<br \/>\nof a classic noir thriller from the likes of Dashiell Hammett or<br \/>\nRaymond Chandler.  The movie starts out slow&#8230;but the character<br \/>\nstudies of half a dozen people (Charlie&#8217;s drunken best friend, the<br \/>\ntoo-hot-to-handle blonde who runs his favorite strip club, his<br \/>\naccomplice Vic, the bartender, the strippers, and two extremely<br \/>\ndyfunctional families) are lighting a bunch of fuses, and when they<br \/>\nburn to their ends there will be hell to pay.<\/p>\n<p>This movie isn&#8217;t quite as funny as <cite>Grosse Point Blank<\/cite><br \/>\nwas and in some ways is even darker, but it has the same<br \/>\ndead-on-target, never-miss-a-note quality in the script and the<br \/>\ndialogue.  I enjoyed every second of it.<\/p>\n<p>Unaccountably, this movie has been getting poor reviews.  But it is<br \/>\nso much better than most of the bloated mega-pictures Hollywood cranks<br \/>\nout that there is barely any comparison.  Eric sez see it.  If nothing else,<br \/>\nit&#8217;s likely to permanently cure you of any desire to hang out in<br \/>\nstrip clubs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1997 I was delighted by Grosse Point Blank, John Cusack&#8217;s masterpiece about a hitman who finds himself (in both senses of the phrase) at his high-school reunion. I loved that movie for its action, its dark comedy, and a script that never stopped being wickedly intelligent for even a second. I&#8217;ve been waiting nearly&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/?p=226\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">The Ice Harvest<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-226","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=226"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=226"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=226"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/esr.ibiblio.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=226"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}