Speaking of terrible police work, the two detectives who are constantly late to the action are also responsible for some of the worst investigative methods of all time. After they manage to catch Traci, they suspect she knows where the hidden cache of diamonds are, but she refuses to cooperate. So their brilliant plan is to let her go, and then sit around the office and wait for her to get a parking ticket. Not to follow her or plant a bug on her car or something, just wait for the ticket paperwork to come across their desk. Maybe her psych evaluation revealed an obsessive compulsion to park across three handicapped spaces when she's committing crimes, or maybe this script is unbelievably stupid.

Although we can't blame them given the lack of material to work with, the performances in this movie don't exactly help. We've already mentioned the One True Face of Lords, but the rest of the acting varies from "phoned-in" to "unforgivable" to "guy who is really believable only in the scenes where he's a womanizing sleazebag, making us suspicious that he's drawing on a lifetime of unintentional method acting." And then there's this virtuoso dialogue and hand-to-hand combat performance:

There are so many more parts of Ice that will haunt us forever. There's a long, detailed segment where Traci goes to buy a bunch of guns out of the back of a van, and then she never uses any of them, just a pistol. Or how about the part where her unsavory brother double-crosses Traci, which she doesn't see coming despite the fact that she hates his guts and he pawned her fucking dog earlier in the movie when she was away?

The piece de resistance has to be one of those police detectives, who takes his "good cop" routine way, way too far and spends most of the movie hitting on Traci like Rocky Balboa going at a frozen side of beef. This, despite the fact that she watched her husband get gunned down in cold blood right in front of her a few hours ago. And the worst part? She's into him, and the movie ends with them riding off into the sunset: a cop who just said "fuck it, let's spend some illegal diamonds", and a woman who will forever hold the world speed record for getting over becoming a widow.

In summary, if Traci Lords wanted to break into regular acting, Ice was not a step in the right direction. Although she must have known that, based on the shower sex scene in which she's wearing underwear the whole time, which is both an uncomfortable reminder of her past and the first of many, many scenes where nobody seems to have thought it through. The only thing preventing Ice from being the worst heist movie ever made is that it lost focus so completely that we're not even sure it qualifies as being a heist movie. So congratulations, Brook Yeaton, you escaped infamy on a technicality. But you'll still have to live with knowing that you directed Ice.

Plot-9
Acting-9
Special Effects-8
Directing-10
Music / Sound-8
Overall-44/50

– Garrett "Hydrogen" Neil and Sean "Trillaphon" Neil (@trillaphon)

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