Michael Shannon delivers a powerfully haunting performance as a stone cold killer unleashed in The Iceman.
If the blockbuster season this year was contentious and divisive, the indie circuit was a treasture trove of bedeazzling content. Check to see what you may have missed or what you know you'll see again.
TF:
Design-wise, The Iceman knocks it out the park, the costumes, cinematography and settings nailing the grim-and-gritty ’70s feel.
GoodFellas is an obvious inspiration (and not just because of Liotta’s casting). If Vromen doesn’t scale the heights of Marty’s masterpiece, there’s still much to marvel at.
Yes, you can argue it’s a conventional biopic; that we’ve seen it all before. But Vromen directs with such vigour and Shannon performs with such deadly intent, it’ll sweep you up.
Collider:
The Iceman is a hitman movie. It’s about a hitman and nothing else. Director and co-writer Ariel Vromen takes no chances on his film based on the life of mob enforcer Richard Kuklinski. The movie paints a two-dimensional character, and then wants credit for not making him one-dimensional. There’s more effort put into developing the characters’ era-appropriate facial hair than developing the story into anything more than a description of Kuklinski’s actions. Only Michael Shannon‘s overpowering screen presence stops The Iceman from being the driest crime drama in recent memory.
