Mickey Prohaska (Greg Kinnear; As Good As It Gets) is an insurance salesman whose been having a bad year. His wife (Lea Thompson; Back To The Future) has kicked him out, he’s going bankrupt paying for the home he is no longer welcomed to and the hotel he’s holed up at, plus he’s just been robbed and the little money that he does have in credit seems to have gone walkabout. Then Mickey meets Gorvy Haur (Alan Arkin; Get Smart), an old retiree living alone in the winter wilderness with his dog and a very valuable violin. Mickey knows his luck has changed when he finds out the violin is worth $25,000 and that Gorvy isn’t exactly right in the head. At first he plans to swindle Gorvy out of his violin but when that doesn’t work he turns to outright theft. In comes Randy (Billy Crudup; Almost Famous), a locksmith who has just installed a new alarm system on Gorvy’s house and is the only one who can help Mickey get back into the place and steal the violin. If only it were that simple.

Thin Ice takes us on a very tense and sometimes comedic heist trip that has a bit of murder, a bit of deception, and once all is said and done, a lot you have to suspend disbelief for. Basically the first time you watch it your going to be drawn in by the danger, the swindle, the way the story rolls out before you. Later your going to have a lot of those, “Hey, wait a minute!” moments that bring the validity of the story down a notch or two. It’s just another one of those films that executes fairly well for awhile but then blows it in the end. Of course I can’t really reveal what it is that ruins the film, well at least what ruined it for me, but believe me it will probably be a universal head scratcher. Other then that Greg Kinnear does a pretty good job at playing his usual stereotype (the guy that everything bad happens to), Billy Crudup plays it way over the top, and Alan Arkin is as usual his quirky ingenious self. At best a very rainy day viewing. As always final judgment is yours. Enjoy.