Icebreaker

Let me start off by saying I am a huge Bruce Campbell fan. Almost everything he does is great entertainment. Things that come to mind are Evil Dead II, Army of Darkness, Brisco County, Xena, and even Jack of All Trades.

So when I saw Icebreaker was playing on Showtime, I thought it might be fun. I was disappointed. I am no movie critic, so let me just describe the movie as bad. Now, some Bruce Campbell movies, like Evil Dead II, are so bad that they are hilarious, and that makes them good. Icebreaker is just plain bad. The plot is silly, the dialog is uninspired, and even the action is tedious, that is, unless you really like skiing and machine guns.

It is a shame, because it looked like Icebreaker had a decent budget. I got the impression that about halfway through, everyone realized it was a dud, but they had no choice but to finish it. Next time, someone needs to read the script before they start shooting.

A plane crashes near the Killington ski resort. On board is a container with a radioactivity warning--in the Cyrillic alphabet.

A group of terrorists, led by Sandra and the terminally ill Greig, are willing to kill, and they do. The power goes out at the resort, and contact is lost with the outside world, except for incoming calls to the resort.

Meg wants to marry ski patrol member Matt, who cleans banks during the off-season. Her rich father Bill does not approve. Through creative and humorous editing, as Meg explains Matt's good qualities, we get to see whether he actually has them. Matt is dealing with some of the terrorists, along with forest ranger Beck, who provides comic relief.

Oh, if only the entire movie had the quality of the music with the opening credits, repeated in the final scenes before the closing credits. Beethoven's Ninth Symphony (the part that included the familiar 'Ode to Joy') performed by the Tblisi Symphony Orchestra. The credits didn't list the name of the excellent tenor soloist (I think he was a tenor, anyway). Magnificent.

I liked Bruce Campbell better as the comical hero Brisco County. He has his moments here as a smart-aleck villain, but I wouldn't say he could make a career out of playing a bad guy.

I felt sorry for Stacy Keach, who apparently was going through a career slump. He did show how talented he is, and if you blink you'll miss it.

Resort manager Clay came across as an incompetent idiot, and later as a poor excuse for a human being. I'm not sure this was a good thing. Beck was a more likable loser, and better acted too.

There were some interesting chase scenes, including one with a great stunt snowboarder. And plenty of explosions for those not obsessed with them. Also lots of tension toward the end. Early in the movie when the terrorists were in New York City, there was a great overhead shot of what may have been the Empire State Building.

But overall, there was nothing really special here.

The only way I will watch this movie is on Rifftrax. The comments are hilarious and are the only way this movie is good. Otherwise the movie is overly nonsensical and ridiculous, there's not even a cohesive plot.

First off, i cannot believe that ANYONE has recommended this movie and, OH YES, they have indeed. I caught this load of stink on network TV, luckily, not parting with any cash. It is TERRIBLE! The only redeeming feature of this movie is that it lowers the bar so much that Batteries Not Included may be resurrected and released by Criterion. I watch a lot of movies and some are bad, but if there is one thing that makes the viewing of a movie an awful experience it is feeling embarrassed for everyone involved with the making of it. PLEASE, do yourself a favor, if you are tempted to rent this or, God help us, buy this, or if it is on TV...READ A BOOK, GO FOR A WALK, WRITE A SCRIPT! Chances are if you are consulting IMDb for anything, then you could write, direct, and star in a better movie, much better, than this. Many compare this to Die-hard on a small scale, but that is a movie worth watching every few years, this is a movie that brings shame to low budget indie films. I love Bruce Campbell but you can't really do anything all that interesting with a horrible script. The fat hobbit is decent in films with great scripts. Do you see where I am going with this? A bad script is a bad script is a bad script and nothing can really make up for that, certainly not lame special effects and abominable acting. It does take place on a ski resort, and if you like ski movies that teeter on the fine line between trash and cult treasure, then I recommend watching Hot Dog The Movie. At least you'll laugh WITH the cast and enjoy the guilty pleasure of cheap titillation. My official scoring for this movie is 1 out of 10 because one isn't presented the option of 0 out of 10. Ed Wood would've relieved himself on this script before finishing page 10. If you are a filmmaker interested in learning everything you shouldn't do, watch it. Anyone else, including family of those involved, just pretend like it never existed and go outside and look at the sky for a couple of minutes, breathe in the air, and run your hands through the blades of grass at your feet.

Terrorists take over a ski resort in search of some "plutonium stolen from the Russians" that went down in the woods. Sean Astin, looking just as he did in "The Goonies", scampers earnestly around the mountain as a member of the Ski Patrol, spending most of his actual time running away from the machine gun-wielding intruders as they blindly shoot at him. His biggest concern is not the radioactive material which could incinerate the entire mountain, but the fact that he is late to a lunch date with his fiancee and her father, played by Stacy Keach. Chrome dome Bruce Campbell is the haughty leader of the terrorists, dying from some unspecified disease. Nice scenery, and a fairly exciting chase scene on skis, snowboards, and snowmobile, but what's the point?