Imagine a cross between “Taken” and “Fargo” and you’ll get an idea of the chilly thrills “Dead of Winter” has to offer.
An extremely game Emma Thompson functions as both a Liam Neeson and a Frances McDormand figure here: She’s got a particular set of skills, but she dishes them out with a healthy helping of Minnesota nice.
Director Brian Kirk gives this living legend an inspired opportunity to play a completely different kind of role. You’ve never seen the British thespian like this before, grungy in putty-colored coveralls, grappling over a rifle in the middle of a frozen lake. But all the craft and presence you’d expect from the two-time Oscar winner are on display, as always. She’s often alone on screen and much of the performance is wordless, but because she’s Emma Thompson, she always holds our attention with warmth and wisdom.
So when her mild-mannered character, Barb, gets shot in the arm while pursuing kidnappers in the woods, she simply stitches herself up in an abandoned cabin using items she keeps in her ice fishing tackle box. It’s harrowing and riveting at once.
Barb is a lonely widow, living by herself in a trailer, but it’s clear she’s extremely capable from the very beginning. Working from a script by Nicholas Jacobson-Larsen and Dalton Leeb, Kirk establishes that this is a woman who can hold her own in any challenging circumstance, even if she lets out the occasional Scandinavian “Uff da!” to voice her frustration. (Thompson speaks in a folksy regional accent throughout, and while her rich voice sounds totally different, she’s not laying it on too thick.)
But when she ends up lost in a blizzard on the way to a faraway lake and her pickup truck gets stuck in the snow, Barb asks for directions from the heavily bearded guy who lives nearby, who happens to be a kidnapper. (The drops of blood on the ground outside his ramshackle home are her first clue that something is amiss.) Marc Menchaca’s character, credited as Camo Jacket, and Judy Greer’s character, credited as Purple Lady (because her jacket is … purple), are a married couple who’ve taken a teenage girl (Laurel Marsden) for complicated and nefarious reasons. Poor Barb has stumbled upon this crime, so of course, she’s gonna rescue her, you betcha!
Kirk immerses us in the stillness of this remote place, which makes the gunshots and bursts of violence seem that much more startling. Any sound stands out, though: the crunch of boots in the snow, the snap of branches in the woods, Barb’s quickening breath.
Watching her figure out one step at a time and summoning the courage to execute her decisions is compelling enough. But “Dead of Winter” relies too heavily on a flashback structure to flesh out why Barb has come to this particular lake at this particular time. These sunny moments are meant to give “Dead of Winter” emotional heft, but they interrupt the action, so they mainly feel distracting. They sap the film of its momentum and cause the pacing to drag. Simply holding on Barb’s face as she revisits fond memories provides enough poignancy. But the fact that Thompson’s daughter, Gaia Wise, plays Barb as a young woman is a nice touch.
Still, the film’s technical values are superb throughout. “Shōgun” cinematographer Christopher Ross captures the bleak isolation of this beautiful but unforgiving terrain (Finland, standing in for Northern Minnesota) with eerie, pinky hues. Oscar-winning “All Quiet on the Western Front” composer Volker Bertelmann adds to this feeling from the get-go with mysterious synths that give way to suspenseful strings as the story kicks into gear.
The movie’s wild, fiery conclusion gives both Thompson and Greer a chance at more physicality than we’re accustomed to seeing from them. It’s gonzo entertainment. As the brains of the operation, Greer seems to have gotten a kick out of playing against her usual comic type herself as a ratty-haired, fentanyl lollipop-sucking villain. But what exactly she plans to do with that teenage girl out there on the ice is truly chilling.
