![]() Estimates of the number of his victims range from 100 to 250. He was convicted of many contract killings for various New York-area crime organizations in 1988. The real-life Kuklinski claimed to have committed his first murder as a young teenager. Its story is based on Anthony Bruno’s novel, “The Iceman: The True Story of a Cold-Blooded Killer,” and the 1992 HBO documentary, “The Iceman Tapes: Conversations With a Killer.” Where “The Sopranos” and its close cinematic equivalent, “Goodfellas,” are warmblooded explorations of violent men bonding, “The Iceman,” directed by Ariel Vromen from a screenplay he wrote with Morgan Land, is as cold as the nickname of its title character. Richard is so secretive that late in the movie when mobsters pay him an unannounced house call, he is dismayed to discover that they know the exact location of his home in suburban New Jersey. ![]() He is a seething loner, and although not as bright, sociable or complicated as James Gandolfini’s Tony, the two have one crucial similarity: Both are fiercely devoted family men who go to great lengths to shield their loved ones from the dirty reality of their work. Richard operates in the treacherous milieu of Tony Soprano, but in an earlier era: the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. Shannon brought to the role of a man driven half-mad by apocalyptic portents in “Take Shelter.” ![]() It is a performance that has the same life-or-death gravity Mr. But in its tiniest tremors you can sense explosive forces roiling below the mask and grasp the duality with a visceral feeling of dread. You can’t really see through Richard, whose pale-blue eyes take in the world from a face as expressionless as a sphinx. In “The Iceman” Michael Shannon’s mesmerizing portrayal of Richard Kuklinski, a notorious contract killer, has the paradoxical quality, peculiar to many great screen performances, of being unreadable and transparent. ![]()
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