“Thin Ice” premiered at 2011’s Sundance Film Festival under the name “The Convincer.” The Greg Kinnear/Billy Crudup-starrer got some good reviews at the time, but the less kind notices called it the “poor man’s ‘Fargo,’” which sounds about right by the look of the trailer. The dark comedy features Kinnear playing a down-on-his-luck insurance man who resorts to fraud in order to get some more cash. Crudup finds out about the scheme and blackmails Kinnear. There are also murders and hi-jinks and ultimatley, it all feels a bit more “Ice Harvest”-esque than deserving of ‘Fargo’ comparisons.
Jill Sprecher (“13 Conversations About One Thing,” TV’s “Big Love”) directed the film, which she co-wrote with her sister, Karen Sprecher. Alan Arkin is always a treat so it's nice to see him here (and he seems to get along with Sprecher as he was also part of her '13 Conversations') and after a decade of TV movies, it’s definitely nice to see Lea Thompson in the role that requires her to act. The movie poster’s tagline, though (“Have an ice day”), is pretty cringe-worthy and seems to be indicative of the tone overall (corny/goofy, but yeah, dark too).
Kinnear and Crudup are both dependable character actors (Kinnear should have won an Oscar for coming out unscathed from Miley Cyrus’ 2010 drama “The Last Song”), but neither are huge draws for audiences and overall, it looks like this could be a hit or miss affair. We’ll find out how good the movie is when it hits screens February 17th. [via CinemaBlend]
