听 User Rating 
Contains strong language, violence and sex references
Take the American Dream and turn it on its head, have Ghostbusters' Harold Ramis point the cameras, add an extra slug of crime, sleaze and white-collar suburban disillusionment and you鈥檒l get The Ice Harvest. Black comedy prevails as John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton's small-time Kansas crooks try to skip town after stealing two million dollars. Sure, the twisted humour - think Pulp Fiction lite - works. But the jokes aren鈥檛 always enough to drag this heavy-footed movie up to speed.
Still, at its best this film is creepy slice of small-town Americana, all strip joints, wiseguys and grizzly murders. Spending Christmas Eve in his native Wichita before he flees town at daybreak with his $2 million booty, disillusioned local lawyer Charlie Arglist (Cusack) is under strict instructions from his associate Vic (Thornton) to Act Normal. But, newly rich, weighed down by a heartless ex-wife and a drunk best friend, he just can鈥檛 resist trying to win the town's superbabe Renata (a well-cast Connie Nielson). Predictably enough, Charlie is soon in fifty kinds of danger.
"CARTOON VIOLENCE"
Twist is heaped upon twist, but, somehow, The Ice Harvest is nothing special as far as plot goes. Luckily, Cusack is at the rescue: one part super-neuroses and one part average Joe, he鈥檚 supremely watchable, even when the dialogue is not as funny as it thinks it is. The highpoint comes, though, via Charlie鈥檚 sorry-assed drinking buddy Pete (Oliver Platt) who manages a truly glorious all-night bender. So go ahead, laugh at the strippers and cartoon violence: you鈥檙e allowed. Just don鈥檛 expect to care when that last twist arrives.
