Review: Thin Ice

ATO

The latest Greg Kinnear movie has the perennial everyman playing a desperate, morally ambiguous insurance salesman trying to solve his personal and financial troubles through any means other than actually selling insurance.  He sets out to steal a valuable violin from a doddering, elderly client, gets caught in the act by a volatile, ex-con locksmith, and  from there everything tumbles towards disaster.


These kind of stories - where the main characters dig themselves ever deeper into trouble - are fun if they're done right.  The best ones have protagonists who are sympathetic in spite of their moral weakness, and their decisions, the steps they take towards their own ruin, are believable.  Think of William H. Macy's character in Fargo: we feel for the dude, even though he sets his wife up to be kidnapped and we never learn for sure why.  There's a charm to his sad sack demeanor, and his naive hope that everything will turn out okay somehow.  


Not so much here. Kinnear's Mickey is a low life in a suit, he puts on a good act but you get the feeling that he'd take advantage of anybody; even his efforts to reconcile with his wife - who he claims to love - are insincere. Kinnear tries mightily to make this work but Mickey is so one dimensional that we don't care too much about what happens to him.


What redeems the film are the supporting characters, especially Allen Arkin as the elderly client and Billy Crudup as the slightly crazed blackmailing locksmith.  These guys are fun to watch, and Kinnear's Mickey comes to life when he's with them.  Playing in limited release.  (Interesting production note: Originally titled The Convincer, Thin Ice was warmly received at Sundance, but distributor ATO pictures made significant changes to the film prior to release without director Jill Sprecher's approval.  The newly cut version has gotten a lukewarm critical response.) C+