bgc-4 Black Ice (the original title) aspires to being a really good B movie. It is basically a film noir and was shot mostly at night. I found it quite enjoyable. There are some plot continuity problems with characters moving 1500 miles in a few hours in a car.Ironside plays his character perfectly and has the usual terminator capability to find his targets when there is no discernible way that he could have done so. The most egregious example of this is when Pacula and Nouri buy a used car in the middle of nowhere and Ironside winds up on the car lot nearly immediately after they leave.Pacula is perfect. Nouri less so. As the film was shot in the current time about 1991 it's now retro. I like it a lot.

Comeuppance Reviews Ben Shorr (Nouri) is a destitute cab driver with plenty of debts. He's an aspiring author eking out a living. One night, Vanessa (Pacula) gets in his cab. Due to some political intrigue, she's on the run from the murderous Quinn (Ironside). She tells Ben to drive her from Detroit to Seattle using "only the back roads" and she'll give him thousands of dollars for his effort. Naturally, the worldly Belgian woman and the low-class shmoe forge an uneasy relationship, while dodging Quinn and getting into a few scrapes. Will they make it? Equal parts 90's Skinemax "erotic thriller" and supposed "neo-noir", seemingly very influenced by the show Taxicab Confessions, Black Ice is serviceable, but nothing more. Its look screams "CANADA!" even though the plot takes great pains to prove otherwise. (It was, indeed, shot in Canada).Michael Nouri, sporting some utterly ridiculous long hair, is not particularly likable as the motormouthed Ben. That's an impediment to the movie. However, he does put in an energetic performance, much more so than he did in Overkill (1996). We also felt Michael Ontkean could have played this role. Interestingly, there's a shot early on in the film of Nouri at a typewriter, with a rotary dial phone and a cigarette. Those three things alone would not be seen in a film today, much less all together. Strictly for preservation reasons alone, we felt that was the best shot of the movie.Michael Ironside does what he does best - be sinister. He plays almost the exact same role here as he does in Watchers. Joanna Pacula provides the eye candy, and we can certainly sympathize with her having to put up with Ben, who frankly can get kind of annoying.Aside from the prerequisite barfight, there isn't a lot of action. Not that there's necessarily supposed to be in a movie like this - but it certainly would have picked things up more. Where some scenes are needlessly talky, they could have put in an action scene of some kind. Sadly, they did not choose that route.While it's nice to see the three leads doing their thing, Black Ice is just a bit too bland to warrant a screaming recommendation.NOTE: The VHS was released in both a rated and unrated version.For more action insanity, check out: www.comeuppancreviews.com

Vomitron_G "A Passion For Murder" (or "Black Ice", as it is listed on here) is pretty much a neo-noir road-movie, which means it should add up to something like a mystery thriller. But it doesn't. Throughout the film there's no suspense to speak of and the plot is hardly anything intriguing. The film just hums along without many problems, really, and as mentioned before, Michael Nouri, Joanna Pacula & Michael Ironside manage to carry everything just fine with their three leading performances.Nouri plays Ben Shorr, a cab driver/aspiring writer. One night he picks up Vanessa (Joanna Pacula) who's gotten herself into a heap of trouble, demanding that Shorr should drive her all the way from Detroit to Seattle. All this while being chased by the cold-blooded Quinn (Michael Ironside), who has a score of his own to settle with Vanessa.Ms. Pacula brings a lot of sex appeal to the table (and gets very naked early on in the film, during an extended sex scene). Nouri is convincing enough and Ironside is always entertaining as the bad guy. The rest of the supporting cast gives inferior performances. Only Mickey Jones is worth mentioning, as the taxi company owner.In the end, the climax boils down to a very dull shoot-out between the threesome. Something you can predict from the moment their chase begins. People say they're FBI or CIA, wave a badge and all, but in the end, who cares? "A Passion For Murder" is nothing special, but at the end of the ride I can't bring myself to flunk this little movie. It's not a badly made film or anything and it's an okay form of distraction from every day life for 90 minutes long. The main purpose of most pulp fiction, anyway.

FEF312 Strong performances from Joanna Pacula, Michael Nouri, and Michael Ironside overcome a weak script. Other pluses are the beautifully photographed winter scenery, and the haunting score from Amin Bhatia. There is a lack of suspense in this movie, but the performances of the three leads held my attention.