The Ice Harvest is film noir

[George Bellefontaine]

I really love those great b&w film noir movies from the 40s and early 50s and The Ice Harvest fits right into that category, only it is film noir in color. It stars John Cusack as a seedy lawyer ( he represents the mob, among other things) and Billy Bob Thornton as a lowlife who teams up with Cusack to rob a mob kingpin( Randy Quaid ) of 2 million. It starts slow but picks up speed as things start to go badly. There are lots of quirky characters, including Oliver Platt, a freind who just happened to marry Cusack's ex-wife, plus Connie Neilsen as a sexy nightclub owner who has more to do with things than I expected. This is not a family film. There is lots of nudity in the nightclub scenes, and things get awfully violent toward the end. This is well written, well directed ( by Harold Ramis ) and well acted, especially by Cusack, Thornton, Neilsen, Platt, and even Randy Quaid, though his part is small. These actors do a great job of breathing life onto their characters, and in the case of Cusack, you find yourself appalled at his actions, yet pulling for him to survive.

An interesting 90 odd minutes that will keep you hooked if you like the suspense/drama noir type of plot. My only wish was that it had been filmed in black and white.

:T :T :T and one half :T

[wkhanna]

This sounds like ‘my kind of film’! Cusack, Thornton and Quaid are some of my favorite actors, and with a noir backdrop, I would expect them to shine. Thanks George, it on the top of my list now!

[George Bellefontaine]

After you get a chance to watch it, let me know what you think.

[Nick M]

I thought this was pretty good too. :T

:35: out of :5:

[Skynut]

I'll put it on my buy list so I can find out what a noir film is.

[Chris D]

Actually, that's interesting. I'm limited to access things where I'm at right now, but I'd be interested to hear what the real definition is of "film noir". I've only understood it from the contextual standpoint, like Sin City.

In any case, I'll add this movie to my watch list.

[George Bellefontaine]

Film noir was a term given by someone in the industry to certain films made in the 40s and 50s like Sorry Wrong Number, The Killers, The Postman Always Rings Twice, Out Of The Past, The Asphalt Jungle, The Killing, etc. They were usually about a crime of some sort that goes wrong, and often women were portrayed as schemers who used men to get something they want. Double Indemity starring Barbara Stanwick and Fred MacMurray was an excellent example of this. But film noir ( noir is French for black) was always shot in black and white and the cinematographer often played with light and dark textures in shadows for certain atmospehric effects. Some of Bogart's films fell into this category and one that comes close to film noir is The Maltese Falcon.

If you watch The Ice Harvest after reading this, you will see what I was talking about in calling it a film noir in color.

[Skynut]

I am definitely checking this one out now.

[stantheman2]

I read somewhere that the term "film noir" came from France. France has always had a good base of fans really into cinema, and U.S movies are widely distributed there. The term was coined by the French sometime in the late 1940s or early 1950s. After seeing all these movies, they noticed a certain, specific genre of movie being made in the U.S., separate from the traditional categories of "action", "drama", "romance", etc.. They called if film noir. Ironically, from what I read, nobody in the U.S. really recognized these films as a distinct genre until the French pointed it out. While the term is hard to define exactly, as the phrase goes, "you'll know it when you see it". I think of films like Sunset Boulevard, the Maltese Falcon, the Postman Always Rings Twice, and somewhat more recently, Chinatown, as classic fim noir.

[wkhanna]

IMHO, for some of the best ‘Noir Americana’..... Look up some Orson Wells films. And a true classic written by Truman Capote, ‘In Cold Blood’.

[George Bellefontaine]

I read somewhere that the term "film noir" came from France.

Sounds reasonable enough. There were certainly a lot of French noir style films made in the 40s and 50s. And noir is French for black.