Predicated on the notion that Kuklinski’s wife and kids were the only people in the world he cared about, the story opens in 1964 with a first date between tough, terse Richie (Shannon) and sweetly unsuspecting Deborah ( Winona Ryder). Drawn from Anthony Bruno’s 1993 true-crime novel and a 1992 HBO documentary featuring interviews with Kuklinski behind bars (he died there in 2006), the loosely fictionalized script by Vromen and Morgan Land spans roughly two decades, dramatizing not only his grisly day-to-day activities but their gradual toll on his family, an effect comparable to that of slow-drip poison. He is the author of The New American Crime Film (McFarland, 2012) and a contributor to the forthcoming Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the War Film.Dubbed “the Iceman” for his practice of freezing his victims’ bodies so as to confuse the time of death, Kuklinski became an active associate of various East Coast crime families in the late 1950s by conservative estimates, he killed more than 100 people before his arrest in 1986. Matthew Sorrento teaches film at Rutgers University in Camden, NJ. Convenient or not, the move extends the killer’s darkness, thanks largely to Shannon’s brilliance he almost convinces us that the Iceman’s humanity was real. That this swelling mania, along with a fear for his family’s safety, leads to his fall serves the third act better than the well-known subject matter, who killed and killed again until one wrong turn. Presenting Kuklinski as a ronin of sorts, the script leaves him frail as his killings begin to overwhelm him. He then takes up with “Freezy” (Chris Evans), an ice cream truck driving hitman whose practice brings him his nickname. When Demeo learns the news, he decommissions Kuklinski, making him into a knight errant.
The “honor” to his family inspires a code against killing women and children, his reason for freeing a witness. Currency exchange is his cover to his wife, while he receives large sums for departing marks. We also feel Shakespeare’s “Out, Out” reminder through the varied efficiency of this assassin (even though the real Kuklinski thought the term too exotic for his work).
A sequence of killings to follow is, in itself, enough to please the serial killer fan base. With his hire as hitman, Kuklinski goes from routine servitude to honored service, thus becoming a knight bestowed with rights in an underworld kingdom. The pairing of a nervy Liotta and somber Shannon strikes a nice touch, noting the impulsiveness behind hits that are dealt effectively cold. When his job in porn production ends, a mob boss in charge, Roy Demeo (Ray Liotta), lays off Kuklinski while noting the emptiness in his eyes.
The birth of his first child right after meets the previous scene a little too cutely, though dealt with swiftly before more of his notorious work.
When pool-hall banter turns to insults against her (to underscore repression, the barbs concern her chastity), Kuklinski slices the offender’s throat without missing a step down an alleyway. Like Henry, the film includes an ironic romance, in the brief courtship of Richard and Deborah (Winona Rider). Normal to him, his murderous routine is a delirium to us for him, family is a fantasy he deceived his loved ones into believing. From afar, this take on Kuklinski reflects the collective repression of the middle class, though the film remains subjective.
With no reaction to killing, Kuklinski heads a family in an attempt to find humanity in his deep void. No such pleasure comes to Kuklinski, played by a very reliable Michael Shannon. The obvious reference point is John McNaughton’s Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, a film that shocks as much by revealing Henry’s quiet life, though his murders bring to him thrills (fueled partially by the involvement of his co-hort, Otis).
His narrative requires a series of such events, and since the most bizarre aspect of the man was his normal family life, The Iceman also captures the mundane that frames the gruesome killings. His recollections reveal many means of murder, from shootings and stabbings to cyanide, airborne or planted in food. Kuklinski, who died in 2006 while serving a life sentence in New Jersey, confessed to having killed somewhere between 100 and 200 people. And yet in adapting his story for a feature film, director Ariel Vroman and his co-writers wisely conceive the mob hitman’s story thus. Carroll asserts that Richard Kuklinski was not a serial killer. In the documentary The Iceman Tapes (1992), Assistant Attorney General Robert J.