Excuse the pun, but it’s hard to warm up to “The Iceman,’’ a sketchy, flatly directed biopic based on one of the most compelling true crime stories out of New Jersey from the lengthy period when I lived and worked in the Garden State.
You know something’s wrong when an intense, distinctive actor like Michael Shannon (“Take Shelter’’) can only achieve isolated moments to break out in this saga of Richard Kuklinski, a suburban Jersey mob hit man who rubbed out more than 100 victims in two decades.
Kuklinski, arrested in 1986, was interviewed behind bars for a vastly more compelling HBO documentary in 1992 — the source for the thin script by Morgan Land and director Ariel Vromen, along with a 1993 book by Anthony Bruno.
The subject was nicknamed “The Iceman’’ not for his impassive mien but for his MO of freezing bodies in an ice-cream truck and thawing them out to confuse detectives about when his victims were killed. He also eluded detection by using cyanide spray when not resorting to far more grisly methods of murder.
The filmmakers don’t make much of these fascinating details, instead focusing on the divide between Kuklinski’s remorseless activities and his other life as a devoted family man. He’s got a wife (a fine Winona Ryder), who gradually becomes suspicious about the financial sources of their rapidly improving lifestyle, and two young daughters (McKaley Miller and Megan Sherrill) on whom he dotes.
It’s an approach that might have worked if the actors had better material. There are only some half-hearted flashbacks to the Iceman’s youth to explain his double life — as well as his aversion to killing women and children that’s revealed relatively late in the game.
If you have a fairly high tolerance for graphic violence, this film is watchable because of its fine cast, including Ray Liotta as a Gambino family associate who provides a more lucrative career path for Kuklinski when he’s laid off from a job editing porno films. (He tells the wife he’s dubbing Disney cartoons.)
An almost unrecognizable Chris Evans plays another employer of Kuklinski’s services, James Franco turns up for a single-scene tour de force as a victim pleading with Kuklinski for his life, and Stephen Dorff has a nice cameo as Kuklinski’s long-incarcerated brother (a rapist and killer).
“The Iceman’’ has its compensations, and the period details aren’t bad for a low-budget picture. But the overall effect tends to be as chilly and monotonous as Shannon’s demeanor as Kuklinski — a real disappointment.
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