Cold as Ice

Film: Dead of Winter
Format: DVD from DeKalb Public Library on gigantic television.

Every now and then, an actor who has made their bones in traditional roles starts making action movies. It happened with Liam Neeson did Taken and it happened when Colin Firth did Kingsmen. It happens to comedians sometimes, too—Bob Odenkirk and the Nobody films, for instance. With Dead of Winter, it appears that it is now Emma Thompson’s turn. And let me tell you, if Emma Thompson is now going to be doing thrillers and action movies, I am 100% here for it.

Dead of Winter is a high concept movie in the sense that you can run down the plot in a couple of sentences. Barb (Thompson) is a recent widow who is traveling to a remote lake in northern Minnesota to scatter her husband’s ashes. On her way to the lake, she discovers that a couple has kidnapped a young woman (Laurel Marsden) for some unknown reason. Since the area is incredibly remote, has just survived a blizzard, and there is no good cell phone service, Barb realizes she is the only hope the young woman’s survival.

This really is the whole plot. The bulk of the movie is us seeing what Barb is going to do to try to rescue the young woman and finding out exactly what is going on with the couple who has kidnapped them. These two characters are never actually given names, and are referred to instead by the colors of their coats—Purple Lady (Judy Greer) and Camo Jacket (Mark Menchaca). And while they go through their plans, Barb does what she can to rescue the trapped woman.

It is arguable that Barb is a lot more resourceful than most people. The kidnapping couple are clearly aware of her presence and want to stop her, so Barb sets up her ice fishing shack (we get a lot of flashbacks that clearly indicate that she’s an outdoorsy person, so this isn’t a stretch), but also arranges for the ice in front of her shack to be weakened, making Camo Jacket fall into the freezing water when he approaches the shack. Meanwhile, Barb has invaded their house, destroying things that will make it impossible for him to fight off frostbite and hypothermia.

The flashbacks are fun. We get a younger version of Barb (Gaia Wise) and her husband Carl (Cúán Hosty-Blaney). We see the beginnings of their relationship, the proposal, and some of their life together, which is what led Barb to the isolated area in the first place. It’s not the first five minutes of Up, but it’s definitely a motivation to like Barb and root for her.

The film does some things really well. One is that Barb, while she is arguably too resourceful for the average person, is also very human. Early in the film, she is shot in the arm, and her cleaning the wound and stitching it feels realistic. This is not the standard action movie trope of the hero reacting stoically while getting first aid for a serious wound. She is clearly in a great deal of pain and dealing with it as best she can while she tries to stitch up the wound herself. When she runs, she doesn’t look cool—she looks terrified and runs like someone who is panicking. That’s entirely appropriate and really helps to balance out just how good she is at causing problems for the bad guys.

Here’s the thing—unless the film is obviously terrible, I’m going to be willing to give Emma Thompson a lot of leeway. Dead of Winter is oddly rated in a lot of ways. On Rotten Tomatoes, it’s at solid mid-70s for both critics and audiences, but on Letterboxed, it’s below 3-stars, which tends to indicate a film that has more problems than it should.

I like the simplicity of this. Thompson’s Barb acts the way that we’d like to think that we would act in that situation. We see something that is clearly wrong and terrible, and we want to think that we would do everything we could to help the person in question. In that respect Barb is really easy to like and root for. It’s also worth noting that while the first 2/3 of the movie are interesting if a bit slow, the conclusion of this film is an absolute rollercoaster.

Do I have a complaint? I do—Thompson, as much as I love her and as much as she’s a good actress, can’t pull off that northern Minnesota/just south of Canada accent consistently. It’s not terribly distracting, but it does come up at times.

Look, your mileage might vary on this one. For whatever reason, the Letterboxd community has decided that Dead of Winter isn’t that good, and they’re wrong. It’s better than that reputation.

Why to watch Dead of Winter: Emma Thompson in an action movie? Yes, please.
Why not to watch: Thompson’s accent doesn’t always work.