Rating summary

Movie		2.5
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.5

Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie Review

Thaws into a soupy dramatic mess.

Reviewed by Casey Broadwater July 12, 2012

As fellow midwestern sibling filmmakers, director Jill Sprecher and her writing partner/sister Karen have been called the female Coen brothers, and they seem determined to make the moniker stick. Their latest movie, Thin Ice—a would-be black comedy about a long con, set in snowy Wisconsin —is basically a less-funny Fargo, complete with a dismembered body and a salesman whose greed gets him in way over his head. In 2011, the film debuted to decent reviews at Sundance—where it was titled The Convincer—but when ATO Pictures picked up the distribution rights, they demanded the 114-minute runtime be drastically cut down. Jill refused, and the movie was re-edited to 93 minutes, re-scored, and re-titled without her input, eventually netting mostly negative press for its short-lived theatrical release.

This is a curious case of an indie production company hijacking a film from its director—massive recuts are typically big studio behavior—so I welcomed the chance to check out both versions included on 20th Century Fox’s Blu-ray release. There are definitely some noticeable changes. The original plays slower, with more character-developing beats, while the “theatrical” cut feels choppily edited. And the new score by Jeff Dana is dippy and forgettable, replacing much better music done by Emmy Award-winning Alex Wurman. The thing is, both cuts share the film’s most glaring flaw—a ridiculous twist that’s over-reliant on let me spell that out for you in detail exposition.

Whichever version you watch—the theatrical cut (1:33:08) or The Convincer (1:49:19)—the story is essentially the same. Greg Kinnear plays Mickey Prohaska, a Wisconsin-based insurance salesman with a silver tongue, skilled in pushing the gullible to buy coverage they don’t need. We know he’s a no-good opportunist when we see him pocket a hundred dollar bill he finds on the floor of the rinky-dink hotel bar where he’s giving a seminar on conversation-starting. Don’t let his late-model Cadillac fool you; he needs the cash. His wife has kicked him out—partly because he bought the car with money from their son’s college fund—and he’s starting to get phone calls from debt collectors at his office.

The wheels start turning as Mickey’s naive new underling Bob (David Harbour) introduces him to a potential gold-mine of a client—Gorvy Hauer (Alan Arkin), a borderline senile coot who’s this close to starring in an episode of Hoarders. Mickey convinces Gorvy to purchase an expensive property insurance policy, but the plan changes somewhat when a luthier and appraiser—a humorously prissy Bob Balaban—values a violin from the codger’s junk pile to be worth $30,000. A nice chunk of change, indeed. Mickey figures he’ll slip Gorvy a tenner and take the fiddle for himself, but even this proves complicated. The old man's semi-dementia makes him a slippery character—we have trouble pinning him down, motivation-wise, until the final twist of the plot—and his high-priced violin essentially becomes the film's MacGuffin, wrapped in the center of a tightly coiled conspiracy.

Mickey makes the transition from conniving insurance shill to outright criminal with the appearance of Randy Kinny (Billy Crudup), a mustachioed ex- con and home security installer who helps Prohaska break into Gorvy's house, intending to swap out the real violin with a scuffed-up fake. A friendly next-door neighbor catches them in the act and Randy bludgeons the guy to death with a hammer, making Mickey an accessory to murder. I'll reveal no more about the plot—at this point, Thin Ice is just getting started—but suffice it to say that Mickey finds himself caught up in an increasingly out-of-control heist caper.

Throughout the film, the Sprecher sisters have trouble finding the proper tone. With middling success, Thin Ice's early scenes channel the midwestern sad-sack salesman humor of last year's Cedar Rapids—the corporate conferences in sad hotels, the desperate out-of-town flings and crusty local eateries—while the last half goes for black comedy but doesn't quite get there in either respect. The film is only intermittently funny and any darkness that it actually musters—like, say, the disposal of the neighbor's body down an ice-fishing hole—is nullified by an overly machinated twist ending that rights all wrongs and leaves us feeling that everything we've watched previously has been pointless. I wouldn't go so far as to say the conclusion is infuriating, but it definitely makes you go wait, what? Really?

It's not a total wash. The cast is uniformly excellent, led by Greg Kinnear, who has that average-handsome-American-male look down pat. He lets his character straddle a fine line between despicable and pitiable, a balance that's necessary for the film to work as much as it does. Alan Arkin is loveably irascible—though his New York accent seems slightly out of place in Wisconsin—and Bob Balaban's is bone-dry funny. But it's Billy Crudup that comes closest to salvaging the entire project, with a maniacal, gum-chomping redneck performance that's worth watching even if the film as a whole isn't.

Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A poor man's Fargo it is, and Thin Ice has the visuals to match, with a chilly palette of blues and grays and dingy neutrals. Shot on 35mm, the movie has been transferred capably to Blu-ray, with a 1080p/AVC encode—in the intended 2.35:1 aspect ratio—that's clean and relatively compression-free. The film's unobtrusive grain structure remains natural, with no evidence of excessive DNR or edge enhancement, and analog noise really only spikes during the darkest scenes. While this isn't the sharpest-looking picture I've seen this year, or even this week, the image displays plenty of high definition detail in the areas where you normally look for it—facial features, clothing textures, in-focus props and production design. Color seems accurate to intent too; there's no wishy-washiness, black levels are deep, and contrast is punchy enough without drawing attention to itself. Thin Ice definitely looks the part of a low-budget indie dramedy—it's not nearly as slick or sharp as typical Hollywood productions—but the film's Blu-ray presentation is certainly satisfying.

Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

I'm glad the Blu-ray producers didn't stiff The Convincer with a lossy Dolby Digital mix. Both cuts of the film feature DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround tracks, and when it comes to effects, surround channel usage, and dialogue reproduction, they're practically identical. Conversations are always cleanly recorded and easily understandable, balanced at the top of the mix, and while the rear speakers don't get a tremendous amount of play, you will hear some quiet wintry ambience and casino clamor, the reverb-heavy acoustics of the Chicago train station and the lonely violin music of a busker filling the soundfield. None of this is particularly immersive, but it sounds fine and definitely adds to the experience. Of course, the two versions of Thin Ice feature drastically different scores. The original, by Alex Wurman, is a more plinking, shambling mix of banjo, piano, drums, and upright bass, while Jeff Danna's music for the theatrical cut is standard-issue comic hijinks fare, the kind of stuff you might hear while someone is sneaking around in a rom-com. In other words, cliche. For those that might need or want them, the disc includes optional English SDH and Spanish subtitles, which appear in easy-to-read white lettering.

Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Behind the Scenes of Thin Ice (1080p, 24:58): A lengthy making-of special, featuring on-set footage and interviews with all the stars, the Sprecher sisters, and various producers. Interestingly, there's no mention of the film's studio re-cut.
• Sundance Premiere Featurette (1080p, 3:48): The director and cast introduce the film at The Egyptian theater.
• Deleted Scenes (1080p, 9:49): Most of these don't appear in either cut of the film, oddly enough, but a few do show up in some form in one or the other.

Thin Ice Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Knowing that Thin Ice—sorry, The Convincer—got so drastically worked over by its distributor without director Jill Sprecher's involvement or consent, I was curious to compare the two cuts and see if Sprecher's original is any better. The differences are there, but I've gotta say—it ultimately doesn't make much of a difference. Both versions are held back by the same basic structural problems and tonal tepidity. Thin Ice is lukewarm—it could definitely stand to be darker and funnier—and its ending beggars belief. That said, Greg Kinnear and Alan Arkin are compelling together onscreen, and Billy Crudup is memorably batshit crazy. The performances aren't quite enough to rescue the film entirely, but they might make Thin Ice worthwhile for heist/comedy fans looking for a low-key laugh. The Blu-ray presentation is solid, and props to 20th Century Fox for opting to include both versions of the film. I'd advise a rental.