Ariel Vromen
The Iceman

Richard Kuklinski was one of the many killers who shattered lives upon lives in the great land of peace and freedom. And in that land, every story and every man are excellent for generating films, books, and more. Ariel Vromen, an Israeli, wisely decided to debut in Hollywood by putting the story of the Polish Kuklinski on film.

We are in New York, and the Italian-American families are killing each other as they always have to control the territory. They almost kill each other out of habit because it's written in their genetic code. There are some vague references to the Lucchese and the Gambino families, indeed, one of the most powerful Italian mafia families overseas. Kuklinski is married, has two daughters, but every now and then, he kills people for the mafia boss he works for (Ray Liotta playing the role of Ray Liotta). Then he tells his boss to go to hell and goes independent with a friend. Because Richard is indeed "The Iceman," cold, calculating, and observant, but he is more impulsive than one would expect him to be in his criminal underworld.

Now, the gangster genre is experiencing a lull in cinema. Not only are ideas lacking, but also the ability to make the criminal parables of these characters anthropologically interesting, once seen as a representative summary of violent American society. It hardly mattered if the epic was traced by Scorsese, De Palma, or Coppola. Today, what is done is to bring to the big screen characters already seen and revisited in the major titles of the genre, absolutely lacking the depth of writing of a Tony Montana or Jimmy Conway. One takes a story and tells it, completely setting aside any sociological reflection, any in-depth analysis of American society, any moral implications of the life led by these trigger men. Vromen also tries to put together a noteworthy film: he entrusts the lead role to Michael Shannon, an underrated actor with great potential, and indeed he does what he can. The cinematography is spot on, very refined, especially in outlining the interiors of the smoky sixties. Too bad that it remains the same as time passes, unchanging, as if the director and collaborators were not aware that they were telling a story that spans decades without changing the very tone of the cinematography. Similarly, Kuklinski's two little girls grow up while his wife (Winona Ryder) always remains the same, as does Richard himself, who occasionally changes his goatee and thus gets by. Parking aside the dissonance of a sought-after realism that doesn't exist, Vromen also has problems managing a screenplay that progresses through devices and is weak because it trivializes the relationships between characters as if man did not have the intelligence to doubt: Kuklinski's family never questions what Richard's job is, and he, in turn, from a simple hired killer allows himself to offend the worst mobsters in the area, always emerging unscathed. It's all right to romanticize reality, but it's hard to think the real Kuklinski dealt with his employers so carelessly.

In this gangster/thriller by Ariel Vromen, there is a lot of craftsmanship, a decent knowledge of the genre, and the skill to at least make up for it with photography, editing, and "atmosphere" due to the intangibility of the (real) story but recycled beyond any limit in its forms and cinematic substance. Some formal brilliance, a cast that manages to stay afloat, and little else. "The Iceman" pairs with the more recent "Black Mass" directed by Scott Cooper: anonymous films of that genre, the gangster movie, which today seems increasingly burdened by the inability to contemporize it. Simply bland.

5.5