Touted as a cracking action-thriller! With icy choc-top in hand, we braced for what might be a real spine-tingler.
First off, we have Emma Thompson playing the lead, as a homespun Minnesota widow with a recently deceased husband. Together they ran a fishing supply store, and it’s revealed via a series of flashbacks that her beloved took her ice-fishing for their first date way back when. Hence, why all these years later, Barb is heading out to spread her late husband’s ashes over the icy Lake Hilda, in, you guessed it, the dead of winter.
Ah, the sprinkling of ashes! Can we bore you with the number of films we know that include this tired gambit? No? OK, we will: Up, PS I Love You, The Descendants, Manchester By The Sea, A Single Man, to name a few…
Ash-sprinkling is more of modern ritual isn’t it? In ye olden-school films, it’s always a burial. The price of real estate, huh?
Brian Kirk (21 Bridges) directs, with a sparse screenplay delivered by writers Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb. Cinematography by Christopher Ross smooths the action, and editor Tim Murell skilfully uses his landscape shots to pace the tension.
BUT… it’s the casting that skates on thin ice, specifically Emma Thompson, who, although doing her valiant best with the accent, wants us to believe in bumbling Barb. Why an American wasn’t cast, I don’t know; details like perfect Hollywood gnashers hardly help. Anyhow, Thompson, en route to the said lake, pulls up to a cabin to ask directions. She sees blood-streaked snow and a sinister man chopping wood – ‘Camo Jacket,’ played by Marc Menchaca. Although Camo Jacket gives her directions to the lake, Thompson gets suspicious and later discovers a young woman being held captive in the cellar. So far, so good.
Upping the ante-freeze, Thompson decides on a rescue, which is frustrated by her continued lack of urgency and general (comic?) bumbling. Later, we come across Camo Jacket’s wife, ‘Purple Lady,’ played by Judy Greer, who we learn is actually the evil mastermind (using the term ‘mastermind’ loosely here).
Gradually, both the plot and stupidity of the characters drift away from any real tension or credibility. No spoilers, but Purple Lady is dying of cancer, and the kidnapped teen is going to provide a healthy liver for a liver transplant. REALLY? Right about now, the audience might start asking questions. The murder plan includes an inconspicuous surgical tent out on the open lake, complete with an operating table for the removal of the said organ. What the…? Purple Lady, although dying, seems to find unusual reserves of energy, notwithstanding that she’ll need to drive across the state to get her illegal operation. (Note: a ‘private’ liver transplant operation in the U.S. costs potentially up to $850,000. The scriptwriter, not least our onscreen crims, really don’t seem to be thunkin’ things through.)
Laurel Marsden, as the spineless kidnap victim, is an undeveloped character, both as written and acted. The camera keeps cutting to her reaction, which you could charitably describe as unnuanced. Albeit, the focus is on the star, Thompson.
In Aussie vernacular: ‘yeah-nah!’
In the hands of another director and/or a better screenplay, this film had the potential to be a really sinister nail-biter; in practice, it will just leave you… cold..
My Rating:  Mild frostbite, one soggy mitten and Thompson’s clearly wandered into the wrong movie.