The Iceman Reviews
Examiner.com
It's as though they were in a rush to get so much killing in that they forgot all of the important elements that would make us care. As a consequence, a fascinating story and character have been flattened and turned into a hurried mess.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
TheMovieReport.com
'Big bad' with a side dish of bats--t crazy is the specialty of Michael Shannon, and so scarily good he is in mining this wheelhouse that one does not dare to complain about him repeating himself.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/4
Movies.com
An exploitation film trapped in the stifling body of a respectable crime drama.
Matt's Movie Reviews
The Iceman rests on the power of one hell of a performance from Shannon, with this monster of an actor playing a monster of a man with frightening intensity.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/5
Movie Talk
The killings quickly begin to bleed into one another and it's sometimes hard to sort out the identities and roles of everyone involved.
Film Comment Magazine
Ariel Vromen doesn't do so much in terms of the story (which spans 20 years, with corresponding hair fluctuations), but he seems to know his violence, and he's a true artiste when it comes to the queasy polyester ambience that holds this thing together.
Cinemalogue.com
The film is able to capture its period setting, but the script is a collection of generic Mafia dialogue and cliched violent shootouts.
Fan The Fire
The Iceman is dark and gritty but there's not enough excitement or tension to really pull you in.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Birmingham Mail
Shannon's mesmerising performance has a Frankenstein edge to it.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Scotsman
Mistaking leaden atmosphere for gravitas, Vromen turns what could have been a vibrant period drama (it runs from the 1950s through to Kuklinski's arrest in 1986) into a sludgy ordeal ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
HeyUGuys
A truly mesmerising turn by Shannon that allows him to cultivate all his ugly thoughts into one brooding menace ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Quickflix
As a chronicle of one of America's most infamous criminals, it's a chilling one. Much of that credit must go to Shannon however, who delivers inspired work sometimes in spite of the mostly conventional feature around him.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Contactmusic.com
Much more involving than the usual hitman thriller, this film takes a deliberately personal approach to its characters that makes it unusually involving.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Daily Express
Both compelling character study and well crafted mob thriller ...
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Radio Times
What makes it at all special is Shannon, who's terrific playing the human being behind the murderer, a man so psychopathic that he doesn't realise he's actually a monster posing as a man.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
Birmingham Post
The Iceman is a welcome adult thriller and its neat period touches will help to transfix many from start to finish.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Daily Mail [UK]
Unfortunately, the movie runs out of things to say about its monosyllabic hero within a half-hour, after which the killings become repetitive.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Financial Times
The Iceman is like a gangster's cold locker: all the nutritive items have been taken out to make room for the dead bodies.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Daily Telegraph
Nothing else in Ariel Vromen's movie is remotely on Shannon's level, from the plodding, Scorsese-clone script to the needlessly lifeless editing and cinematography.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Little White Lies
Suspect barnets aside, there's not a lot to take away from this by-the-numbers genre piece.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
