michaelg-784-603194

This is at best a B minus minus film--truly terrible but not without its entertaining moments--mainly in listing the flaws and the cliches in the ludicrous plot, wondering how so fleshly a woman as Ms Brooks could be such a wooden actor and if James Griffith is related to Zachary Scott, speculating how so many marcelled men could appear in the same picture, and, finally, how even a poverty row film could end in such a hapless manner. The pivotal mind reading psychiatrist can only be accepted by the most gullible viewerbut at least David Leonard looks the part. One review calls Blonde Ice an obscure film. Never has deep obscurity been so deservedly earned.

First, the film is set in Chicago, not New York. Fine acting from Quinn, the great Irene Pappas as his wife, and the enigmatic and quite lovely Inger Stevens in, sadly, her last film. Sam Levene is touching as Quinn's dear friend. Quinn as life force and failed dreamer is not to everyone's taste ... but it's Anthony Quinn--always the romantic, raging mensch with a code in those mean streets--a code that he eventually betrays, though with a compelling motive. This is curious film in many ways but a classic example of what happens when men and their dreams collude with what Pappas' character calls "dirty reality."

There are some actors (Barbara Stanwyck, Trevor Howard) who I would watch in anything. Alan Arkin is almost one of them. This is an incoherent mess of a film, with an incomprehensible plot, brutal cops presented positively, acres of stupid car and and cycle chases. Its one saving grace is the relationship between the Arkin and Caan cop characters and some of their dialogue. If you are an Arkin or Caan completist, watch if you can, otherwise ... I cannot think of a bigger waste of time. Caan is as good as the material lets him be, Arkin's sense of timing and Zen presence are a joy, and one of two scenes i which the dialogue seems from a different, better film are not, alas, enough.