Movie Review: "Thin Ice"

"Thin Ice": B. My father, The Marquis, used to tell my sister and me, "Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive." The plot of "Thin Ice" is a case in point. We learn quickly that insurance agent Mickey Prohaska is a con man and a schemer, notwithstanding his affable front. This comes as a surprise, because Mickey is played by Greg Kinnear, cast against his usual type (e.g., comedies like "Little Miss Sunshine" and "As Good As It Gets"). Mickey has a one-nighter with a bar fly at a convention, he hires an associate who just accepted a job with Mickey's competitor, only to stiff the new guy out of commissions, and he tries to sell unneeded insurance coverage to unsophisticated customers, one of whom is the near-senile Gorvy Hauer, masterfully played by Alan Arkin. Mickey's agency business is falling apart, he is maxed out on his credit cards, he lies to his secretary, he has tapped into his son's college fund without telling his estranged wife or his son, he is a check kiter, and he uses business funds to cover personal expenses.

Things go from bad to worse when he learns that an old violin owned by Gorvy might be worth $25,000. Mickey immediately concocts a plan to steal it by switching it with an instrument made cheaply in China, but an ex-con named Randy (Billy Crudup) gets in the way. Randy arrives at Gorvy's ramshackle house to install a security system. Mickey catches on that Randy is a crook, just like himself, but he can't execute his plot without Randy's knowledge. The scheme might have worked, were it not for the unexpected arrival of an old neighbor who comes to pay a visit to the absent Gorvy. Things rapidly take off in a downward spiral from this point.

Mickey is in a very tight squeeze, with major problems coming at him from all directions. His biggest problem is Randy, who is unstable at best and a psychopath at worst. Crudup's portrayal of Randy reminded me a little bit of Samuel L. Jackson in "Pulp Fiction" - - a keg of dynamite which could explode at any time. Mickey runs the emotional gamut, from initially believing he was in for an easy score with the violin to eventually being faced with the prospect of facing capital punishment if he isn't bumped off first. Kinnear is masterful showing this range.

"Thin Ice" is one of those types of movies that I've praised before, the kind where the viewer senses that she is close to the end and yet there are so many ways the story could go. I was all ready to sing (er, write!) the praises of this movie when it did a "one eighty" and ended with a long flashback that attempted to explain to the viewer how things really happened with scenes not shown before during the course of the film. Unfortunately, this denouement was for the most part preposterous, and my grade for "Thin Ice" went southbound as a result. (Please note, I do not object to the device of using end-of-movie flashbacks for explanatory purposes. In fact, I rather enjoyed the look-back explanations in last year's "Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows.") Perhaps the filmmakers want to entice the viewers to see their movie again, now that we know how the story ends. That is what I did for a couple of films with surprise endings; "The Sixth Sense" (1999) and "The Usual Suspects" (1994) come to mind. I am sad to report that I was so disappointed in the surprise ending for "Thin Ice" that I doubt I'll view it again. It was, however, highly entertaining for the first ninety percent. Too bad they had to spoil it with the final ten.