Stefan Ruzowitzky’s Ice Fall sounds like an easy win in the action thriller genre. Its premise alone is almost impossible to screw up, since it’s a cat-and-mouse chase set in freezing conditions. All it takes is 90 minutes of antagonists chasing after protagonists through harsh terrains and encountering all kinds of natural threats to slow them down. Easy-peasy, right? Not for Ruzowitzky and Co., who somehow make every wrong filmmaking choice possible.
The story starts off promising enough. A plane containing millions in stolen cash crashes in a frozen lake in Montana. The goons don’t know where the wreckage is, since the trackers they installed on the cases are underwater. This changes after poacher Harlan (Joel Kinnaman) fishes a case out of the water. Suddenly, the bad guys are on high alert and head off to the icy terrain to see who found their money. Harlan is stopped by warden Ani (Cara Jade Myers), who discovers the cash and wonders what this guy is doing with all this dough in the middle of nowhere. Ani can’t even get a proper explanation out of Harlan, as Mr. Rhodes’ (Danny Huston) crew shows up and wants the case and location of the rest of the money. A shootout breaks out, but Ani and Harlan escape into the chilly wilderness. However, Rhodes’ goons aren’t too far behind them.
See, this doesn’t sound so bad. That’s the first 30 minutes of Ice Fall, though, and it seems like Ruzowitzky realized he still had another 60 minutes to shoot, so he and everyone else made up the rest along the way. It’s frustrating, since this story should have always been about Rhodes’ crew chasing Harlan and Ani. Yet, there’s an insistence on throwing endless and shoehorned subplots against the wall to see what sticks. In the end, it only detracts from the main storyline.
One of the strangest narrative choices is the desire to humanize the baddies. It’s understandable if the viewer empathizes with the characters if they find themselves in a difficult situation, and it’s clear there’s an internal struggle taking place over whether they should or shouldn’t commit the crime. This can’t be said about the antagonists in Ice Fall. Let’s use this example: There’s a scene in which they straight-up murder an elderly innocent man who finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time as he helps Ani and Harlan. A while later, a baddie dies, and the group is broken up about it and cries about one of their own. Why should the audience care or feel anything for them here? They’re murderers!
Ice Fall also isn’t helped by its bizarre cinematography and editing choices. Emotional and intimate moments between characters oscillate between wide-angle and close-up shots, killing the mood and never cementing the authenticity of the interaction. This is film school 101 stuff. Then, there are the jagged and unnatural transitions within the same scenes. For example, you’ll see two characters close together then there’s only one person standing there – not even a proper beat, fade, or setup to smooth the shot. And don’t even start on the positioning of the characters during the action sequences, because it’s obvious that several takes have been stitched together. Now, while that’s normal in any movie, the viewer isn’t meant to be able to identify where the one shot ends and the other begins.
Acting wise, Ice Fall does nothing to enhance Joel Kinnaman’s reputation as a leading man. He might receive top billing here, but he feels secondary to everything else. (Maybe it’s all those scenes of the antagonists moping around that hogged the screentime.) His character’s motivations also have many question marks around them, and there’s a sense that Kinnaman himself wasn’t too sure who Harlan is. As a matter of fact, this could be a criticism of every character in the movie, as no one seems to be well written or clearly defined. They just do, or react, serving as nothing more than plot devices.
There’s no sugarcoating it: Ice Fall slips and sinks as an action thriller. It didn’t need to do too much to succeed, but it struggles to execute even the basics right. It’s difficult to not come away from this film and think this was nothing more than a colossal waste of time for everyone involved.
The Review
Ice Fall
Ice Fall drowns as a less-than-average action thriller.
Review Breakdown
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Verdict
