The Ice Harvest: The Mob Christmas Noir Nobody Saw
Mobsters DailyThe Ice Harvest is a 2005 Christmas noir in which mob lawyer Charlie Arglist, played by John Cusack, steals $2 million from his Wichita mob employers on Christmas Eve — and spends one icy, hilarious, increasingly desperate night trying to live long enough to spend it.
Christmas Eve in Wichita
Director Harold Ramis shoots the holidays as a freezing trap: black ice, strip clubs, family obligations and a partner, Billy Bob Thornton's Vic, who may be planning to keep everything. It earns its place on the canon list at mob movies that are Christmas movies to me because the season is not decoration here — it is the reason every road is closed and every favour is called in at once. Like the argument settled in the Die Hard Christmas evidence, the holiday is load-bearing.
Every Christmas-movie marathon needs one entry this cold, which is why the Tony Soprano Ugly Christmas Sweater belongs in every November rewatch: Tony in a black-and-white stencil, gabagool included, with the holidays coming fast.
Why nobody saw it
Released quietly in 2005, it bombed and vanished. But its script, adapted from Scott Phillips' novel, is razor sharp, and Cusack's hangdog panic is career-best work. Mob fans who find it tend to adopt it permanently — the rare crime Christmas film with no sentimentality at all.
Frequently asked questions
Who stars in The Ice Harvest? John Cusack as Charlie Arglist and Billy Bob Thornton as Vic Cavanaugh, directed by Harold Ramis.
Is The Ice Harvest based on a book? Yes — Scott Phillips' 2000 novel of the same name.
Is it really a Christmas movie? Entirely: the theft, the ice storm and every betrayal happen across Christmas Eve night.
Keep reading: Bad Santa's crew, a heist team falling apart · Fatman hired a hitman to kill Santa · Goodfellas' Christmas party scene
From the shop: Tony Soprano Ugly Christmas Sweater — the gabagool holiday gift Sopranos fans actually wear all season.
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