The Iceman

Director Ariel Vromen made this because of a documentary. After watching HBO's 1992 film The Iceman Tapes: Conversations with a Killer he said he was so taken by the story that he actually liked Richard Kuklinski and felt sympathy for him. The uncomfortable part of this film is that the feeling transfers. Kuklinski worked for years as a contract killer. When he was arrested in 1986 neither his wife nor his daughters knew; to them he was a family man in the packaging business. The film runs the two lives side by side and refuses to present either as a mask over the other. Michael Shannon plays Kuklinski, with Winona Ryder as his wife Deborah and Ray Liotta and Chris Evans around the business. It screened at Telluride and Toronto in 2012 and opened in limited US release on 3 May 2013. Who it is for: viewers who want a cold criminal biography and Shannon at his best. Who it is not for: anyone expecting strict factual fidelity. Kuklinski's own accounts have long been treated as suspect; the film takes that narrative as its base and does not question it.