Thin Ice
In it, Kinnear plays Mickey, who is to the insurance industry what Tony Curtis was to the PR game in “Sweet Smell of Success” – a desperate bottom-feeder, trying to get ahead by stepping on the dirty necks of the even more desperate people around him. But then he meets a slightly addled old man who has somehow fallen heir to an expensive violin. And slowly, Mickey forms a plan – that will quickly, and dangerously, escalate from fraud to theft to murder. Kinnear (who was also very good in the otherwise problematic Bob Crane biopic, “Auto Focus”) is excellent as Mickey, full of faked friendliness and genuine desperation – you can almost smell the flopsweat under the drugstore cologne.
“Thin Ice” is perfectly acted, and nicely shot, it gets the wintry smalltown landscapes exactly right. But in the end, it’s a little too much like its own main character. It wants the big results. But it’s not willing to put in the hard work to really earn them.
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nice thriller