Emma Thompson<\/a> functions as both a Liam Neeson and a Frances McDormand figure here: She\u2019s got a particular set of skills, but she dishes them out with a healthy helping of Minnesota nice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nDirector Brian Kirk gives this living legend an inspired opportunity to play a completely different kind of role. You\u2019ve never seen the British thespian like this before, grungy in putty-colored coveralls, grappling over a rifle in the middle of a frozen lake. But all the craft and presence you\u2019d expect from the two-time Oscar winner are on display, as always. She\u2019s often alone on screen and much of the performance is wordless, but because she\u2019s Emma Thompson, she always holds our attention with warmth and wisdom.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
So when her mild-mannered character, Barb, gets shot in the arm while pursuing kidnappers in the woods, she simply stitches herself up in an abandoned cabin using items she keeps in her ice fishing tackle box. It\u2019s harrowing and riveting at once.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Barb is a lonely widow, living by herself in a trailer, but it\u2019s clear she\u2019s extremely capable from the very beginning. Working from a script by Nicholas Jacobson-Larsen and Dalton Leeb, Kirk establishes that this is a woman who can hold her own in any challenging circumstance, even if she lets out the occasional Scandinavian \u201cUff da!\u201d to voice her frustration. (Thompson speaks in a folksy regional accent throughout, and while her rich voice sounds totally different, she\u2019s not laying it on too thick.)\u00a0<\/p>\n
But when she ends up lost in a blizzard on the way to a faraway lake and her pickup truck gets stuck in the snow, Barb asks for directions from the heavily bearded guy who lives nearby, who happens to be a kidnapper. (The drops of blood on the ground outside his ramshackle home are her first clue that something is amiss.)\u00a0Marc Menchaca\u2019s character, credited as Camo Jacket, and Judy Greer\u2019s character, credited as Purple Lady (because her jacket is \u2026 purple), are a married couple who\u2019ve taken a teenage girl (Laurel Marsden) for complicated and nefarious reasons. Poor Barb has stumbled upon this crime, so of course, she\u2019s gonna rescue her, you betcha!\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kirk immerses us in the stillness of this remote place, which makes the gunshots and bursts of violence seem that much more startling. Any sound stands out, though: the crunch of boots in the snow, the snap of branches in the woods, Barb\u2019s quickening breath.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Watching her figure out one step at a time and summoning the courage to execute her decisions is compelling enough. But \u201cDead of Winter\u201d relies too heavily on a flashback structure to flesh out why Barb has come to this particular lake at this particular time. These sunny moments are meant to give \u201cDead of Winter\u201d emotional heft, but they interrupt the action, so they mainly feel distracting. They sap the film of its momentum and cause the pacing to drag. Simply holding on Barb\u2019s face as she revisits fond memories provides enough poignancy. But the fact that Thompson\u2019s daughter, Gaia Wise, plays Barb as a young woman is a nice touch.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Still, the film\u2019s technical values are superb throughout. \u201cSh\u014dgun\u201d cinematographer Christopher Ross captures the bleak isolation of this beautiful but unforgiving terrain (Finland, standing in for Northern Minnesota) with eerie, pinky hues. Oscar-winning \u201cAll Quiet on the Western Front\u201d composer Volker Bertelmann adds to this feeling from the get-go with mysterious synths that give way to suspenseful strings as the story kicks into gear.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
The movie\u2019s wild, fiery conclusion gives both Thompson and Greer a chance at more physicality than we\u2019re accustomed to seeing from them. It\u2019s gonzo entertainment. As the brains of the operation, Greer seems to have gotten a kick out of playing against her usual comic type herself as a ratty-haired, fentanyl lollipop-sucking villain. But what exactly she plans to do with that teenage girl out there on the ice is truly chilling.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Imagine a cross between \u201cTaken\u201d and \u201cFargo\u201d and you\u2019ll get an idea of the chilly thrills \u201cDead of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47771,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-47770","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47770","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47770"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47770\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47770"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47770"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47770"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}