Inclubabu Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

WillSushyMedia This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

FirstWitch A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

dromasca I am not a great fan of 'true crime' stories, books, or films. And then, there are exceptions. The Iceman directed by Ariel Vromen is one of them, and I will try to shortly explain why it succeeds in my opinion to do better than many of other similar films (the genre is very popular in American cinema).Richard Kuklinski was a real person. He was a paid hit-man in the service of the mob, who by the time he was caught in 1986 had allegedly more than 100 people murdered on his record. The amazing thing was that he succeeded to keep his real 'profession' and source of income hidden from his 'normative' family for more than 20 years, living a comfortable life in the suburbs. His beautiful wife and two daughters never guessed the real person that he was. Split personality? Possibly – an extreme case anyway.The film works well on many plans. First of all this is due to Michael Shannon, an actor with many supporting roles in his record, who gets here the opportunity to bring to screen a character who seems to care only about his family with no apparent feelings about other people, not even respect for their lives. Yet, his first mistake and hesitation that triggers his downfall is the hesitation to kill the teenager young girl who witnessed one of his crime, maybe because she reminded him about his daughters. The rest of the supporting cast is excellent as well, with Winona Ryder as his unsuspecting wife and Ray Liotta as the mob chief who hires him to part ways later. There is little explanation about the background and motives of his deranged and criminal behavior. The references to his brother and one flashback of his childhood may be considered insufficient, but actually I believe that it's better so. Too much explanation would have spoiled the chilling effect of being exposed as viewers to his dark personality and deeds. As it stays, it's a study in crime with enough details to make it hard too forget, and enough non-clarity to leave it open to interpretation from viewers.

Peter Lorme The Iceman (2012) is a decent hit-man thriller based upon real life events. The story follows Richard Kuklinski ( Michael Shannon), a notorious contract killer. The film is complete with tons of mafia movie clichés: old cars, conversations in fancy Italian restaurants, everyone's wearing leather jackets, the main character goes from rags to riches, there's a scene at a night club, there's a cold blooded killer whose a family man and Ray Liotta is playing some angry mobster. The best part of this film is undeniably Michael Shannon's outstanding performance. His performance is definitely award worthy. However, most of this movie is bland. You don't care about anybody except Michael Shannon's character. You don't give a s*** about his wife ( Winona Ryder) and you ESPECIALLY don't give two s**ts about his two daughters. The film glosses over too much. It consistently time jumps. The action is really good and so is the acting. The story, however, is not as interesting as it should be. A movie about a hit-man with over 100 documented kills should absolutely grip me. This movie didn't do that for me. Its not bad,but its nothing creative or original. Its decent.

tattoojunkie There is nothing i would love more to say that this is a brilliant film but its not....its very badly written and has little if nothing to do with the life of The Iceman. However, the lead actors especially Michael Shannon do a fantastic job and their performances are wonderful in the face of such a bad script I know in many ways the book will always be better than the film just due to the info that can be squeezed into it but even that isn't true in this case HUGE swathes of information are missing - the characters are not introduced properly and neither are their relationships to the iceman The film makes him out to be some sort of seedy porn king - this couldn't be further from the truth...no mention of his early life, his brothers death, his parents abuse, his kills that he used for practice, the people he did kill and torture, the poisoning phase, he went through, the domestic abuse between him and his wife...all of this seems to have been ignored by someone who if you ask me hasn't even read the book Hopefully a writer who has read the book will do another screenplay and they'll cast Michael Shannon again and it will be as good if not better than the book!

ddcharbon This wasn't a bad movie, but once I read about the life of the real Kuklinski, I felt this film was pretty much a whitewash of the man. Vronen presents Kuklinski as brutal to punks and wise guys, but essentially loving toward his wife and family (if a bit distant). In truth, K. regularly savagely beat his wife and once tried to run her over with a car. He also didn't kill just punks in pool halls and scumbag wise guys, he killed random people on the street--sometimes just to test out a method of murder that he was planning to use for a contract hire to make sure it was truly lethal. K. was savagely beaten and tortured by a father who succeeded in killing one of his older children, though never charged, during one such beating. It seems he was killing Daddy over and over again in all those murders. This is largely unexplored by Vronen's oddly two-dimensional portrait--in spite of its unjustified sympathy for the man. But now for the headline. James Franco is listed as one of the headliners in this flick, but he has only a very small part in the film. Nonetheless, he could--and should-- have given the film a very powerful moment. The scene is apparently true and K., who murdered hundreds without compunction, later felt guilty for its depth of psychological sadism. In it, Franco's character--a two bit hood, gangster hanger on--is pleading for his life, praying for it, actually, and K. tells him he will wait, delay his death, so he can see if his prayers will be answered. Franco's character, Marty, prays with a combination of desperation and hopelessness as he is confronted with his own lack of belief in an intervening God, even as he prays to stave off death for as long as he can. Shannon's K. waits impassively for time to pass, for God to fail to show up, so that he can finish the task at hand. Shannon is great in the scene--his combination of patience, cruelty, and implacable power--an embodiment, like Javier Bardem's killer in No Country for Old Men, of doom. But Franco is absolutely horrible in this scene since you don't believe for one second this guy thinks he's about to die. He phones the performance in as if it were his Oscar hosting gig. The camera is on him in a scene that should make you feel intense angst, but absolutely nothing is happening. It's not subtle, it's not intense. It's Franco sprawled out on a couch with his hands folded in prayer and squeezing his eyes tight like he was afraid someone was going to use a squirt gun on them. If you threw a rolled up newspaper at a casting line you'd hit somebody who could have done the scene better. Franco is a wildly inconsistent actor, who can be quite good, but is often awful simply because he's still acting like a spoiled adolescent even though he's now in his mid 30s. Get your act together, man; be professional. If I were Shannon, who delivers a great performance, watching Franco screw the pooch in this scene, I'd be feeling murderous too.