Perhaps there comes a time in every actor’s career when they must Liam Neeson. In Dead of Winter, it’s the blithe and witty Emma Thompson’s turn to learn “a very particular set of skills” up in ice-clogged Minnesota, as she “frickin’ fiddlesticks” her way into the centre of a kidnapping plot committed by a snarling, fentanyl lollipop-sucking Judy Greer and her witless husband, played by Marc Menchaca.
Director Brian Kirk, alongside writers Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb, offer a nicely plausible mise-en-scène for Thompson’s Fargo accent and puffy snowsuit to run wild, yet the actual mechanics of this pared-down thriller are harder to swallow. Here, it’s not enough that there’s a Chekhov’s gun at the centre of play – the film has to treat said narratively significant object like it’s a powerful, sacred relic.
