It takes a lot of gall to start your movie by inviting comparisons to the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece Fargo. And, somehow, director Brian Kirk takes that even a step further by essentially demanding those comparisons as he opens his new movie Dead of Winter, not just with the heavy white blankets of snow, not just with that very particular Minnesota accent, but even by namechecking Brainerd, the town of about 14,000 people that was a major location in the Coen film, but otherwise isn’t terribly likely to be mentioned in a movie. With apologies to Brainerd. Kirk is Irish, so whether these are his only real reference points for Minnesota, or whether this was intended as an homage, I can’t say, but he does his film no favors by setting it up against a movie Roger Ebert called one of the best he’d ever seen.
But enough about Fargo, I guess. Because if Kirk had left well enough alone, he’d have an imperfect, but decent enough little thriller with a fantastic performance by its lead, Emma Thompson. She plays Barb, who’s taking a trip out to a frozen lake to do some ice fishing when she sees a woman come running out of the woods, get shot, and then get dragged back into the woods by a man. Barb follows them and finds the woman tied up in a basement, at which point she overhears the man and another woman talking about the whole thing, and it doesn’t sound like they’re up to anything good.
We spend much of the rest of the movie with Barb trying various ways to rescue the kidnapped woman without getting caught or shot by her captors, and this all gives Emma Thompson a great opportunity to do a whole lot she doesn’t usually get to do—namely, run and hide and shoot and stab and generally play a reluctant but entirely believable action hero. And she’s game for every bit of it, including the Minnesota accent, which she gets pretty well, enough so that it largely sounds natural instead of like a caricature. She’s fun enough that she anchors the rest of the film, which gets a little bit silly at times, especially when it leans too hard into the whole Minnesota-ness of it all, with characters apologizing for cursing even while they’re in situations where cursing is the only appropriate response. Judy Greer plays Barb’s antagonist, and while Greer is a national treasure, and I’m glad she gets a chance to play a villain, she’s given little to do other than look haggard and yell a lot. And throughout, the film hints that something much stranger than we realize might be going on here, but disappointingly, any truly strange possibilities never materialize.
And still, Kirk knows how to create striking images. An early shot of a vast frozen lake is ominous and impressive, and a late scene in the icy abyss is just as effective. Dead of Winter wears its flaws, but it has enough going for it that I simply wish it would have let itself stand on its own two frozen feet.
Dead of Winter is in theaters.
