Not only is the narrative woefully underdeveloped but it's also sheer fiction in many instances.
It has none of the visceral qualities that shock you like in 'The Godfather' and 'Goodfellas', mob films that draw you into their brutal world where death is merely 'business'. Considering what a desperately violent individual Kuklinski was, 'The Iceman' is a rather neutered production. Very little of this was explored in the film, we get little more than a brief montage of random people being blown away – it's all so damn rushed and disorganised. The book recalls Kuklinski's methods of murder, the way he stalked his prey and his utter indifference towards his victims' suffering. Lacking also are the details of Kuklinski's career. The passages of Carlo's book that cover his youth make for appalling reading unfortunately none of this power is to be found in Ariel Vromen's rather boring adaptation. Kuklinski recalled that it was at this moment that he discovered 'it was better to give than receive'. When 13-year-old Richard also became the victims of local bullies, it all became too much for him – he beat one of them to death with a pole and discarded his body with brutal efficiency. All of the relentless anguish was compounded by his family's total destitution.
WHO WAS THE ICEMAN KILLER SKIN
Even when Richard sought solitude in the placidity of his local church as an altar boy, nuns would punish him by splitting the skin on his knuckles with the edge of a metal ruler. Richard's mother was also a callous, unpleasant person despite her zealous religious values she had no qualms about battering her children with a broom handle. After Stanley dealt Richard's brother Florian a particularly malicious beating, he died from his injuries the police were told that he fell down a flight of stairs. Stanley Kuklinski, his deeply cruel father, conditioned his son with the daily violence he inflicted upon his whole family. This is a fatal mistake, because it was his harrowing formative years that shaped Richard. His unspeakably awful childhood, for instance, is covered with an utterly perfunctory flashback scene that lasts for all of about 15 seconds. I appreciate that cramming one's life story into a screenplay can be a difficult task, however there are major flaws in the script that could have easily been avoided – the screenplay should've been scrapped and completely rewritten.
It fails to develop both the narrative and subsequently the character of Richard Kuklinski, glossing over almost everything that made the book such an interesting read. The problem with the film is that it's awfully constructed it's all so terribly rushed. While the author had a habit of repeating himself and some of Richard's recollections seemed rather dubious in places, Carlo's lengthy book was an engrossing read, I enjoyed it very much. Having read Philip Carlo's biography of Richard Kuklinski 'The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer', I can say that Ariel Vromen's big screen adaptation 'The Iceman' is a big disappointment.
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