christmas noir

‘Tis the holiday season so, having just skimmed John Gibson’s thriller,” The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse Than You Thought” we were naturally in the mood for a story of greed, power and corruption in the hallowed halls of government and other such worlds of unimaginable privilege and excess.

Unfortunately, “Syriana” didn’t open until today, and since it was yesterday, we went to see “The Ice Harvest” instead, which proved to be a story of greed, power and corruption in the seedy suburb of ‘Wichita Falls, Kansas’; a world of unimaginable tawdriness and excess.

In “Ice Harvest” John Cusack plays Charlie Arglist, a mob lawyer who’s been sleepwalking his way through life, pausing only to drink and hang out in strip bars until he attempts to pull a Christmas Eve getaway after having stolen millions from his bosses. Billy Bob Thornton plays the amoral pornographer accomplice, who may or may not fade away into the night with the loot. Oliver Platt is the drunken buddy and fellow nihilist Pete Van Heuten, a man ravaged by the misery of having gotten what he wished for, and now longing only for a brand new start.

I absolutely enjoyed this movie. Recalling the best of 1940’s film noir this comedy/thriller is bleak, violent and consistently funny. In Connie Nielsen, who plays the femme fatale Renata whom Charlie is pining for, we have a Lauren Bacall for the 21st century; from her long, side-swept locks to her ruby red lips; down to the gams that seem go on forever, as Sam Spade might have said. Even bound to a chair and threatened with a pistol, she speaks in a low, husky Bacall-like whisper, when a lesser dame would have screeched and howled like a banshee. That’s style. Noir style.

This movie isn’t for everyone. My viewing partner, the unflappable Turk, did not care for it and did not at all appreciate my dragging him along.

“That’s not my idea of a Christmas movie,” he said later, glowering at me over margaritas. “Too depressing. I’ve had too many Christmases like that.”

I must have looked a little alarmed.

“Well, without all the violence and the…you know…blood and all.”

I continued to stare.

“Oh! The strippers. There were never strippers.”

Good to know.

“Christmas should be happy,” he continued. “And if it can’t be happy, it should at the very least not be that dark.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It's pretty dismal for a lot more people than anyone cares to admit. Besides, did you see the footage of the 6 AM tramplings in front of the Wal Mart and Best Buys? They were stepping on old people! Rioting for X Boxes. I think that’s pretty dark.”

“Shameful. But you don’t see them making a movie out of it.” He paused. “Yet.”

Alright. He has a point.

Still ~ if you, like me, are beginning to feel just a wee bit of an overload from all the gingerbread, tinsel and enforced merriment of the yule; if you too are, shall we say dispirited by the cloud of raging consumerism that permeates the air while the Gibsons and O’Reillys of the world attempt to make political hay of the spiritual ho-ho-ho…

Well, then just think of “The Ice Harvest” as a quickie antidote; a nice dry martini in a season of sweet, and sometimes sour rum punch.

Ho ho ho!