THE ICEMAN: He Comeths But He Looks Awfully Familiar

        Hello, WORLD!!! Smokkee here, talking about a film from a genre that I thought would never get old. That film is THE ICEMAN, the genre is gangster movies, and that assumption was dead wrong.

        Based on a true story, THE ICEMAN tells the tale of Richard Kuklinski (played by Michael Shannon), who was just a porn distributor with a bad temper until he met a goodfella by the name of  Roy DeMeo (played here by the goodfella Ray Liotta) who comes to him to kill him for a bad video deal but instead notices that Kuklinski is a steely type of fellow. "He's as cold as ice." DeMeo observes at one point in the movie, made clear by the fact that DeMeo has a gun looking squarely in Kuklinski's face at the time.  Instead of killing him, DeMeo gives Rich a better money making opportunity as a hitman for DeMeo's mafia family.

        Speaking of family, Rich is totally devoted to his wife Deborah (Wynona Ryder, acting a bit rusty here) and later, their two daughters. He has hidden the fact that he's a hitman from her and their friends. Hell, he even hid the fact that he was a pornographer from her too. Soon separating the two Richs are as hard for Kuklinski to do as is socializing and everything comes crashing down. The only guy he really could talk to is another hitman who names himself after the icecream truck he works out of: Mr Softee (Chris Evans, one of the few acting bright spots in this movie).

         ICEMAN may have seemed like a good idea for movie. According to his Wikipedia page, Kuklinski is said to have killed anywhere from 100 to 250 people between 1948 and 1986. In most cases I'd say yes, make a movie about that guy. This movie isn't bad however, it's just a rehash of almost every gangster movie cliche you've ever seen, from THE GODFATHER to SCARFACE even to Ray Liotta's riveting turn in GOODFELLAS. The question is if you've never seen any of those movies would I recommend this movie to you. I don't think I could. Besides Liotta and Evans the rest of the cast doesn't do much to make this story compelling or to make their character stand out. Not totally surprising, though I did expect a better showing from Shannon but he didn't have much to do but glare most of the time. Now name me a gangster movie that didn't have a gangster doing that. Go ahead. I'll wait. D