Film review: The Iceman (15)

One of them is the case of Richard Kuklinski, the Mafia hitman who rubbed out more than 100 people over 20 years yet allegedly maintained a façade as a family man.

One has to wonder at the lack of curiosity that could allow his wife and daughters to never suspect that Kuklinski was a mass killer. Or that he once stored a corpse in a deep freeze for two years to prevent the cops pinpointing the time of death when he eventually dumped it.

Played by the magnificent Michael Shannon, Kuklinski emerges as a stone-faced sociopath whose complete lack of empathy with his victims made him the perfect contract killer.

Spanning two decades from the mid ’60s to the mid ’80s The Iceman is a grim excursion into modern crime thrillers and one that is populated by a gallery of famous faces in supporting roles. Both David Schwimmer and Chris Evans don bad ’70s hairdos and sideburns as wannabe drug lord and inventive assassin respectively. Ray Liotta is Kuklinski’s employer. Winona Ryder is his wife. Director Ariel Vromen never analyses what it was that allowed Kuklinski to become an instant gun for hire. Only Shannon, via the prism of domesticity and friendship, shows the conflict in the man.