THIN ICE

Name: THIN ICE
Item: THIN ICE
Author: Review

"No Moral Consequences"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

THIN ICE is a crime caper comedy that wants to be FARGO lite, but is ultimately too clever for its own good. Greg Kinnear stars as shady insurance salesman and conman Mickey Prohaska. Mickey comes across an old farmer named Gorvy, who wants to insure a violin he claims is worth $25,000. Mickey is led to believe it’s really worth over a million dollars. Desperate for money to pay an array of bills and believing that Gorvy is too addled to really notice, Mickey winds up in a scheme to trade the valuable violin for a lookalike. He gets involved with a smalltime, foul-mouthed criminal named Randy. Randy kills Gorvy by hitting him in the head with a hammer. He then blackmails Mickey by taking his picture to prove he was there at the crime. Events spin out of control from there.

THIN ICE has some fun with its lead actors, but it lacks charm and dramatic weight. Ultimately, THIN ICE has too thin a plot and the characters are too cold to gain the viewer’s sympathy. Eventually, THIN ICE falls apart toward the end, which also concludes on an immoral note.

Content:

(RoRoRo, LL, V, S, N, AA, MMM). Very strong anything-goes Romantic worldview; at least 50 obscenities (including many “f” words) and nearly 30 profanities; man is killed with a hammer hit to his head, with discussion later on about the body being chopped up and buried under an icy lake; implied oral sex with married man, implied married sex; upper male nudity; alcohol use and drunken married man takes woman to a hotel room and eventually passes out; near-pathological lying, deceit, fraud, betrayal, and little to no moral consequences.

More Detail:

THIN ICE is a crime caper comedy that wants to be FARGO lite, but is ultimately too clever for its own good. Also, it has a strongly Romantic, anything-goes worldview in which characters lie, cheat, deceive, steal from, and defraud each other and insurance companies constantly.

Greg Kinnear stars as shady insurance salesman Mickey Prohaska. Mickey’s always ready with a lie or bogus statistic designed to trick people into purchasing insurance. He comes across an old farmer named Gorvy Hauer (Alan Arkin) who wants to insure a violin he claims is worth $25,000, but soon Mickey is led to believe it’s really worth over a million dollars. Desperate for money to pay an array of bills and believing that Gorvy is too addled to really notice, Mickey winds up in a scheme to trade the valuable violin for a lookalike. He winds up involved with a smalltime criminal named Randy (Billy Crudup). Randy winds up killing Gorvy by hitting him in the head with a hammer, then blackmails Mickey by taking his picture to prove he was there at the crime.

Events spin out of control from there. Mickey and Randy have trouble disposing of the body. At the same time, twists and double-crosses pile up around the violins. A surprise ending reveals even more twists. Ultimately, however, the final scam doesn’t really add up in the details. This problem makes the movie fall apart on its poorly planned logic. The problem is compounded by the fact that wrongdoing wins without consequences and fraud is allowed to continue.

THIN ICE has fun with its lead actors, as Kinnear and Arkin reunite after their Oscar-nominated romp in LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE. However, it lacks the charm of that earlier film and isn’t dark enough to satisfy fans of its obvious influence – the Coen Brothers movie FARGO. Despite the immoral ending, the movie is relatively restrained in some forms of immorality, with one brief apparent murder and brief implied adulterous sex. Even so, Billy Crudup’s sleazy Randy bursts into several comedic and highly profane rages, which is jarring compared to the rest of the movie. Finally, the movie’s winking and laughing at doing anything, no matter how dishonest, to gain money and commit fraud should leave a sour taste in the mouths of most viewers, especially media-wise viewers.

Ultimately, THIN ICE has too thin a plot and the characters are too cold to gain the viewer’s sympathy. It’s only appropriate for adults, but not highly recommended even on an artistic level due to its contrived plot.

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What you listen to, watch, and read has power. Movieguide® wants to give you the resources to empower the good and the beautiful. But we can’t do it alone. We need your support.

You can make a difference with as little as $7. It takes only a moment. If you can, consider supporting our ministry with a monthly gift. Thank you.

Movieguide® is a 501c3 and all donations are tax deductible.