Rating: 3/5 
The third film from director Jill Sprecher is a perfectly suitable example of neo-noir. There’s an easily understandable insurance scam, a slew of colorful characters developed with unpredictability as a hallmark and a tantalizing fiscal payoff that escalates in size as the film progress. There’s even a handy MacGuffin in the form of a scuffed violin that Mickey stumbles upon in the dilapidated farmhouse home of a cranky loner, only to discover that it’s one of those hidden treasures that keeps hopeful hoarders lining up for “Antiques Roadshow” auditions. The cranky loner is named Gorvy (played with a thick “hoo Jheez, you betcha” accent by Alan Arkin) and he’s naïve enough to think his new insurance policy means he can call the agent out to fix his broken television and cranky enough that separating him from his unexpectedly pricey instrument isn’t necessarily going to be easy.
Matters become more complicated when Mickey gets tangled up with a shady locksmith (Billy Crudup) who installs Gorvy’s new security system, bringing another person into the mix who helps set Mickey’s already faulty moral compass spinning out of control. Much of the film plays out with the loopy logic of a bicycle assembled by a blindfolded drunkard. Things come together only to rapidly fall apart, and one of the film’s key pleasures is watching Kinnear’s slow burn anxiety as he stands baffled before the mess he’s made. Alfred Hitchcock used to love dropping an everyman into incredibly complicated circumstances, but Joel and Ethan Coen figured out it’s sometimes more satisfying to see a guileless braggart in the same situation, with a little dose of comeuppance often in the mix. That’s the approach employed by Sprecher (who came up with the screenplay with her regular writing partner, her sister Karen) and Kinnear makes the ideal target.
The mechanics of a film like this are of the utmost importance, and that’s where Thin Ice both shines and stumbles. The intricacies of the whole plot largely stand up to scrutiny when they’re fully revealed at the end of the film, even as all the moving parts require a fairly strong suspension of disbelief over the way everything fell into place in a nearly ideal manner for the schemers. The ultimate payoffs to some of the earliest scenes would likely be a bit more satisfying if those set-ups weren’t such awkward brickwork in the flow of the film that they simply had to have more importance than was initially apparent.
Generally, though, Sprecher controls the flow and tone of the film with great care, knowing when to press the accelerator a little further to the floorboard to glide over the rough patches. It has some of the devious charm of her debut feature, Clockwatchers (1997) and none of the ponderousness that sunk her sophomore outing, Thirteen Conversations About One Thing (2001). It’s lithe and entertaining, plainly assured that any tangles will be taken care of by the end, when it will all pull together in a sturdy knot.
