134. The Ice Harvest (2005)

March 4, 2014

My wife and I decided to watch The Ice Harvest in remembrance of Harold Ramis, and I don't mean to speak ill of the dead, but this movie was terrible. I think the main reason we couldn't stand it was because it was supposedly set in Wichita, Kansas, but it was as if the writer had never been to Kansas and just made Wichita this imaginary place filled with strip clubs, mobsters, and a giant frozen river. Usually I can get over location issues in a movie, but in The Ice Harvest, they kept reminding you that they were in Kansas when they so clearly weren't.  Aside from that, the movie had a few interesting bits, but mostly it was just a con movie that didn't have a whole lot of purpose. John Cusack starred as a lawyer who, with his partner in crime Billy Bob Thornton, stole more than $2 million from the mob and then tried to get out of town. They didn't try very hard, though. Thornton took the money for safe-keeping while Cusack visited several strip clubs (again, this is supposed to be Wichita, KS... how many strip clubs do they think are in Wichita?) and more or less said his good-byes while hiding from the mob. There were some plot twists that weren't in the least bit surprising, and although I would say I was fairly satisfied with the ending, overall I would call this one a dud.