The Frozen Ground ★★★
FOR most of this decade Nic Cage has been starring in pretty average stuff.
Generally these days, like John Travolta or Bruce Willis, he’s on the poster brandishing a gun and snarling.
He’s made three or four films each year and, while I haven’t seen them all, they are generally straight-to-video fare.
Occasionally, the dumpster dive is worth it, particularly for three horror films, Mandy, Mom and Dad and Drive Angry, in which his trademark craziness has been well suited.
I would add the serial killer drama The Frozen Ground from 2013 to that list of exceptions.
The film tells the true story of Robert Hansen who murdered at least 17 women and kidnapped and raped many more during a crime spree that lasted from 1971 to 1983.
Cage dials back the histrionics to convincingly play an Alaskan state trooper whose determination and commitment helped bring Hansen to trial when many of his colleagues were indifferent to the effort required and bosses resistant to acknowledging their past failure to stop many killings.
Yes, I know, we’ve seen this type of story brought to the screen many times before, whether factual or fictional.
But New Zealand writer and director Scott Walker, who is yet to make another film, efficiently moves the proceedings along and there is reverence for the actual families in its treatment of the victims.
Walker’s one failing is to inject an unnecessary side drama into the plot involving the only victim who manages to escape and reluctantly helps the authorities to track Hansen down and testify against him.
It’s hard to tell whether this actually happened in real life, but it adds little to her story which is compelling enough both in terms of what is done to her and the relationship she slowly forms with Cage’s character.
John Cusack adds to the list of actors who have gone against their usual type to play an abhorrent human. His performance starts off a little too downbeat but gradually improves with Hansen’s growing realisation that he will eventually be caught, leading to one of the film’s best scenes in a police interview room.
The other good scene is between Cage’s character and Vanessa Hudgens, playing Cindy the young victim, which demonstrates the strength of their on-screen chemistry and reminds us how good an actor Cage can be.
***SPOILER ALERT***
Hansen eventually confessed to 17 murders and another 30 kidnappings and rapes. In return for the confession and leading police to some victims’ graves, he was only charged with four murders and the rape and kidnap of Cindy.
Nevertheless, in 1983 he was sentenced to 461 years in jail with no parole. He had served 31 of those years when he died in a prison hospital in 2014.