Michael Shannon is tremendous in this role, he portrays this dark, cold, indifferent man, but still capable of love. The movie is slow - with dialogue that is hard to follow at times. I love a true story, though this one is tough considering how many this man killed. I like that they focus on the man, not just death and murder.

This wasn't a bad movie, but once I read about the life of the real Kuklinski, I felt this film was pretty much a whitewash of the man. Vronen presents Kuklinski as brutal to punks and wise guys, but essentially loving toward his wife and family (if a bit distant). In truth, K. regularly savagely beat his wife and once tried to run her over with a car. He also didn't kill just punks in pool halls and scumbag wise guys, he killed random people on the street--sometimes just to test out a method of murder that he was planning to use for a contract hire to make sure it was truly lethal. K. was savagely beaten and tortured by a father who succeeded in killing one of his older children, though never charged, during one such beating. It seems he was killing Daddy over and over again in all those murders. This is largely unexplored by Vronen's oddly two-dimensional portrait--in spite of its unjustified sympathy for the man. But now for the headline. James Franco is listed as one of the headliners in this flick, but he has only a very small part in the film. Nonetheless, he could--and should-- have given the film a very powerful moment. The scene is apparently true and K., who murdered hundreds without compunction, later felt guilty for its depth of psychological sadism. In it, Franco's character--a two bit hood, gangster hanger on--is pleading for his life, praying for it, actually, and K. tells him he will wait, delay his death, so he can see if his prayers will be answered. Franco's character, Marty, prays with a combination of desperation and hopelessness as he is confronted with his own lack of belief in an intervening God, even as he prays to stave off death for as long as he can. Shannon's K. waits impassively for time to pass, for God to fail to show up, so that he can finish the task at hand. Shannon is great in the scene--his combination of patience, cruelty, and implacable power--an embodiment, like Javier Bardem's killer in No Country for Old Men, of doom. But Franco is absolutely horrible in this scene since you don't believe for one second this guy thinks he's about to die. He phones the performance in as if it were his Oscar hosting gig. The camera is on him in a scene that should make you feel intense angst, but absolutely nothing is happening. It's not subtle, it's not intense. It's Franco sprawled out on a couch with his hands folded in prayer and squeezing his eyes tight like he was afraid someone was going to use a squirt gun on them. If you threw a rolled up newspaper at a casting line you'd hit somebody who could have done the scene better. Franco is a wildly inconsistent actor, who can be quite good, but is often awful simply because he's still acting like a spoiled adolescent even though he's now in his mid 30s. Get your act together, man; be professional. If I were Shannon, who delivers a great performance, watching Franco screw the pooch in this scene, I'd be feeling murderous too.

I found this film good-paced and grabbing. It is Michael Shannon's performance that glues all the scenes together solidly, especially for some scenes not so self-solidifying. The main problem here is the script. It seems like the writer has problems extracting and summarizing. The story is with a good outer frame, and yet strangely hollow on the inside. It must be at the pick-and-choose process. Another probable reason is that the basis of this film came from two different books. The evidence of doubling, and even intersecting, information is quite apparent. Conflicting personalities and emotions can help build up a film's tone. But screenwriters can't be conflictual themselves, or the entire film feels like a swinging pendulum. I think "The Iceman" is a good enough film. Certainly entertaining. But it could have been a lot better, possibly along the line of "Goodfellas" and even "The Godfather". If we can walk back, there are certain points that the filmmakers should have exploited. The contrasting life of a businessman and a ruthless contract killer is what should have been dug deeper and expressed profusely. Some extra scenes should have been added to show us the man's great, great anguish. The Winona Rider's character is incredibly underused. As someone so close, it is she who can observe or even spot the contradictions. Whatever she feels about her husband, or the resolution she may have had over the years, it should have shown much more dramatic at the arrest scene. Surprises and anger are not enough. There must be some elements of life shattering or a state of deep shock. All in all, it comes back to the script, as acting and directing are indeed satisfactory.

Never mind the true story the film is based on, the performances in "The Iceman" alone are reason enough to see the film. In this crime thriller, Michael Shannon plays Richard Kuklinski, a man who's married (Winona Ryder plays his wife Deborah) and has two beautiful daughters. They are completely unaware that he is a ruthless assassin for the mob and has been for years. The film follows the man's life from the beginning of his employment to the mob in the 1960's until his death in 2006.A word ahead of time, I'm basing my review solely on the film, not having done any research on the real-life person. If there are facts in the film that have been fudged, so be it. I'm talking about Richard Kuklinski as portrayed in this movie. That said the fascinating part of this film is Kuklinski himself. You get only limited glimpses into his past, but here's what you know: he's got a brother that's in prison for life, a history of violence (and perhaps even murder) and he had an abusive father. What I liked is that even though you follow the man for a significant part of his life (minus a few jumps in time) you're still left wondering who he is, but in a good way. The reason why they call him "The Iceman" is because of the way he froze dead bodies to throw off police investigations, but that nickname could have been used to describe his personality. The man is absolutely ruthless. He will kill anyone in the blink of an eye in a way that's almost reckless. It's as if he has no sense of self-preservation or control, except for when it comes to his family. One thing I hate above all when it comes to movies about killers is when they come up with a lame explanation about what makes them able to kill. I think back at Rob Zombie's "Halloween" and how it did absolutely everything wrong because it over explained everything. Here, you get just enough to feel like you can kind of get close to the key, but not so close that you would be comfortable around him. That's the way to do it.Another element that I really enjoyed is the strange relationship that Kuklinski has with his family. Throughout the film, he insists many times that he does not care about anything aside from his wife and daughters. This man was not a serial killer because killing didn't seem to particularly excite him and it was not to get any form of attention, it's just that he was good at murder and since it didn't affect him emotionally at all, he just kept doing it. He is a strange paradox in the sense that on the one hand, he wants to have a normal life with a family and a house and in a way I feel like he would have wanted to have quiet life running or being employed at a regular place of legitimate business but he refuses to do anything but high-paying jobs that include murder. Because of his enigmatic nature and a fantastic performance from Michael Shannon, you are compelled to keep watching, even as you become disgusted by the man.This is a solid film filled with top-notch performances. Winona Ryder does well in the role of Kuklinski's wife, a mousy woman that falls in love with him and never suspects what her husband actually does for a living. Ray Liotta plays a mob boss, a role he's familiar with but is always compelling in. Probably the biggest surprise in the film is Chris Evans, whose character I don't want to talk about too much because it would be spoiling things, but the actor is nearly unrecognizable in the role. I found it very interesting, once the film was over to compare his character to Michael Shannon's, particularly towards the end. Did he think of Kuklinsi as a friend? Did he think they might be kindred spirits? Long after the film ended, the "hero" of this picture will stick with you and you'll want to discuss it with a friend. It's a little frustrating that the film feels like such a tiny glimpse in a rather infamous career (apparently there were at least a hundred murders committed by Kuklinski) but for the performances and the fascinating, if incomplete slice of life that we get here I wholeheartedly recommend you catch "The Iceman". (On Blu-ray, January 29, 2014)