Unless it’s a classic, movies made before 2000, rarely tweak my interest, or a revisit; “The Ice House” directed by Tim Fywell, starring a youthful, heavily-accented Daniel Craig, was a worthy exception; Craig, as “Detective McLoughlin”, cynically sour, cagily perceptive, tries to solve a marvelous mystery of a withered corpse (found in a dilapidated, long disregarded ice house) a missing, assumed murdered, husband, in an estate inhabited by three, presumed lesbians; Craig exponentially improves as the well-written complexity of the scenario weaves, provocatively, to its unexpected conclusion.
It was devilishly compelling concentrating on the unveiling of the history of the protagonists; writer Minette Waters’s (published in 1992), subject matter is peppered with contemporary traumas; in tandem with blatant truthfulness and underlying, pejorative bigotry seething at the core of tiny minds; titillating tension between Detective McLoughlin and “Anne Cattrell” (saucy, Kitty Aldridge) reverberates throughout the tantalizing, taunting diegesis. Pivotally, “The Ice House” was a welcome hiatus from today’s frenetic technology: no cell phones or wizardly computers, just plodding, intelligent, deductive reasoning, eventually exposes the nefarious.
“The Ice House” is a refreshing reminder of simpler times; the days of “wine and roses” still hold enchantment, wonder, exultation.
FOUR STARS!!!!
Peneflix