[This is a re-post of my review from the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival. The Iceman opens today in limited release.] 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. Richard Kuklinski (Shannon) was always a violent murderer. Mobster Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta) just gave Kuklinski a way to use his inherent tendencies to make some money. The story then plays like a recreation of real events from 1964 to 1982 rather than something resembling a dramatic arc. Kuklinski is fundamentally the same at the beginning of the movie as he is at the end of the movie. He was a killer with a code and a very short temper. Only his external circumstances changed, and not to the extent where he was forced to seriously reexamine his life. But The Iceman wants us to believe Kuklinski is a compelling figure because even though he may have killed over 100 people during his career as a hitman, he also loved his family. This is not a mind-blowing concept. We've all seen gangster ...
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