Thin Ice (2012)

The iniquities of the wicked ensnare them,
and they are caught in the toils of their sin.
Proverbs 5:22

The narrator of this dark comedy means it when he warns us about being careful of believing in what we hear and see. Mickey, well played by Greg Kinear, is an insurance agent in Kenosha, WI, is badly in need of money because he has lost heavily gambling at the insurance convention at the beginning of the movie. Through a complicated series of events that began at that convention, where his credit cards were stolen by what he thought was a half-drunken woman during a one night stand, and a seemingly naive agent whom he hired away from his rival leads to his meeting an old man (Alan Arkin) to whom he secretly sells the policy that his new hiree had cultivated, Mickey becomes enmeshed by his greed in a plot that will undo him.

When he discovers that this newest client ‘s old violin is, unknown to its owner, worth thousands of dollars, he hatches a scheme to steal it away, but this leads to unintended consequences of violence and blackmail that will upend his life. The Upper Midwest setting and plot bears faint echoes of Fargo, but the film is filled with far more bitter irony. Once certain revelations are made at the climax you will want to go back and watch this film again to see if you can its clues.

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