Phonearl Good start, but then it gets ruined

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Bessie Smyth Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

Catherina If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

bgc-4 Black Ice (the original title) aspires to being a really good B movie. It is basically a film noir and was shot mostly at night. I found it quite enjoyable. There are some plot continuity problems with characters moving 1500 miles in a few hours in a car.Ironside plays his character perfectly and has the usual terminator capability to find his targets when there is no discernible way that he could have done so. The most egregious example of this is when Pacula and Nouri buy a used car in the middle of nowhere and Ironside winds up on the car lot nearly immediately after they leave.Pacula is perfect. Nouri less so. As the film was shot in the current time about 1991 it's now retro. I like it a lot.

Comeuppance Reviews Ben Shorr (Nouri) is a destitute cab driver with plenty of debts. He's an aspiring author eking out a living. One night, Vanessa (Pacula) gets in his cab. Due to some political intrigue, she's on the run from the murderous Quinn (Ironside). She tells Ben to drive her from Detroit to Seattle using "only the back roads" and she'll give him thousands of dollars for his effort. Naturally, the worldly Belgian woman and the low-class shmoe forge an uneasy relationship, while dodging Quinn and getting into a few scrapes. Will they make it? Equal parts 90's Skinemax "erotic thriller" and supposed "neo-noir", seemingly very influenced by the show Taxicab Confessions, Black Ice is serviceable, but nothing more. Its look screams "CANADA!" even though the plot takes great pains to prove otherwise. (It was, indeed, shot in Canada).Michael Nouri, sporting some utterly ridiculous long hair, is not particularly likable as the motormouthed Ben. That's an impediment to the movie. However, he does put in an energetic performance, much more so than he did in Overkill (1996). We also felt Michael Ontkean could have played this role. Interestingly, there's a shot early on in the film of Nouri at a typewriter, with a rotary dial phone and a cigarette. Those three things alone would not be seen in a film today, much less all together. Strictly for preservation reasons alone, we felt that was the best shot of the movie.Michael Ironside does what he does best - be sinister. He plays almost the exact same role here as he does in Watchers. Joanna Pacula provides the eye candy, and we can certainly sympathize with her having to put up with Ben, who frankly can get kind of annoying.Aside from the prerequisite barfight, there isn't a lot of action. Not that there's necessarily supposed to be in a movie like this - but it certainly would have picked things up more. Where some scenes are needlessly talky, they could have put in an action scene of some kind. Sadly, they did not choose that route.While it's nice to see the three leads doing their thing, Black Ice is just a bit too bland to warrant a screaming recommendation.NOTE: The VHS was released in both a rated and unrated version.For more action insanity, check out: www.comeuppancreviews.com

FEF312 Strong performances from Joanna Pacula, Michael Nouri, and Michael Ironside overcome a weak script. Other pluses are the beautifully photographed winter scenery, and the haunting score from Amin Bhatia. There is a lack of suspense in this movie, but the performances of the three leads held my attention.

Grekel Zender Considering this is supposed to be something of an intriguing mystery thriller, it raises little in the way of suspense. So, it's a little surprising that the film has the capacity to hold your interest until the end, which is disappointedly bland.Anyway, the film stars Joanna Pacula as an undercover agent of some sort, who contrives to accidentally kill her target after having sex with him. Hitching a ride in Nick Mancuso's taxi, she arrives at the airport only to find her boss (Michael Ironside) has received orders to kill her, as to leave no trace of the crime.This TV movie hangs on the fact that Mancuso doesn't know who or what Pacula is until late on, although the viewer knows fairly quickly. Still, performances are more than adequate and Ironside gets to repeat his cold-hearted bad guy routine once again.