Black Ice (2007)

That was an excellent one.

Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Dreadfully Boring

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

What would you do if you found out your spouse was cheating on you? Would you seek revenge? How far would you go to get revenge? Black Ice is a sick and twisted look at how far one woman will go to get revenge on her husband and his lover. It follows the main character Saara as she seeks to get back at her husband Leo, an architecture professor, and his student and lover, Tuuli.After discovering that Leo is having an affair with his student Tuuli, Saara finds Tuuli and becomes her friend. Saara begins to take karate classes where Tuuli is an instructor. To Tuuli, Saara is Crista, a divorcée and a psycho…logist. Soon the two become best friends going clubbing and partying together. But soon Tuuli starts to realize that Crista is a little off. Although this award winning film is well done, it was far too disturbing for me. For Black Ice, the title itself tells us a lot about the story. Black ice is hard to see on the road-just like infidelity can be difficult to see when it is happening to you. Leo had been cheating on Saara for years and she had no idea. In addition, black ice can be very dangerous and cause numerous accidents. Meanwhile, infidelity and betrayal can lead to extremely devastating situations. And each are only realized when it is too late to stop the destruction that will ensue. When Saara finally discovered Leo's unfaithfulness and how long it had been happening, she was expectedly upset. Sure enough, it ended with a deadly disaster. A major theme in the movie is betrayal. For Saara and Leo it is infidelity and for Crista and Tuuli it is trust in a friendship. Saara struggles with the realization of her husband's infidelity with Tuuli. Through Saara's friendship with Tuuli, Saara discovers that Leo has been cheating on her since their engagement. This irritates Saara even more and she starts to become even more psycho. Furthermore, Leo doesn't really seem to man up to his actions and fight to be with his wife. Tuuli is also betrayed through Saara and her supposed friendship with Crista. Tuuli grew to trust Crista and they became best friends. But in the end, she realizes that Saara is just out for revenge. However, this friendship shows the other side of betrayal from the point of view of the girlfriend. In the end, this allows the viewer to feel more sympathetic towards Tuuli as she is not simply the girl Leo slept with. Although it isn't explicitly stated at the start, Saara is out for revenge. The theme of revenge is central to the story. At times it was confusing to understand exactly what was Saara's plan as she befriended Tuuli. We could only suppose that she is out for vengeance. The point where it went too far for me was the night when Saara learns that Tuuli is pregnant and she drugs Tuuli. This scene was the most disturbing as Saara plays it off as if she is into Tuuli. Saara is portrayed as a messed up character that goes way too far to seek payback. I feel that it was not necessary to go this far. Saara also tries to kill Tuuli at karate with a knife. Everyone else in the karate studio sees this but seems to have little reaction to the situation and go on as normal afterwards. However, in the end Saara has stopped trying to take revenge when she performs a life-saving operation for Tuuli and her baby. By this point Leo has passed away and we see that Saara only really wanted to hurt Leo. Through Crista's friendship with Tuuli, Saara realizes that she doesn't want to hurt her.Another interesting aspect of the film was the portrayal of men and women. Men are shown as only wanting sex. One day Leo and his friend are walking through their construction site talking about sex and Leo's justification for his infidelity. On the other hand women are portrayed as strong. Saara isn't afraid to leave Leo after being treated horribly and Tuuli is a resilient woman, ready to fight for herself. The Finnish film, directed by Petri Kotwica depicts a disturbing story about relationships, betrayal, infidelity and revenge. It won five Jussi awards, including best film. Although Black Ice may be worthy of these awards, I do not feel it is worth anyone's time to watch it. Although Black Ice was a well-done thriller I wouldn't recommend to anyone. It's too messed up.

A fitting title for a dark drama, Black Ice is full of the undetectable deceptions that make three people's lives slippery and dangerous. Full of scenes with meaning beyond plot advancement, great acting and intense film making, Musta Jaa unfolds to be a well-made film worth watching, but not life changing. The Hollywood reminiscent style adds a wider audience than the strictly artsy films from other countries, with the dramatic scores, suspense and situations and some added flair of occasional humor.Trust and betrayal under the blanket of deception is the biggest issue faced by the characters of this intense film. It starts with the basic cheating husband, then skillfully layers on a sort of friendship between the mistress and the wife and many levels of deceptive trust on all parties. Poor Tuuli trusts "Christa" too much for her own good, but from her perspective she wouldn't have suspicions. Leo trusts both of the women but is not trustworthy for either of them, fooling around and making a mess of people's emotions. A truly ironic scene when he thought Tuuli had cheated on him, was not just ironic in that Saara was the cause of the man's presence in bed and they called her, but also that he expected Tuuli to be faithful. Those expectations are laughable in the presence of his philandering ways, though I did appreciate that bit of complexity on his part. Even though Tuuli knows of how much he cheats on his wife, she still stays with him, which is an interesting moral predicament as a participator in adultery.Dispersed through the film were scenes full of meaning beyond the surface level action that I appreciated greatly. When Tuuli and Saara are playing and dancing on the ice rink, it is deeply metaphorical of their situation at the time. They are cajoling around on a slippery surface, bumping into one another and dancing through this insane love triangle. They waltz together and run around trying to stay on their feet and then Saara makes the risky phone call, drawing attention to their slippery friendship. The other scene I especially noticed was the costume dance party where the two women were wearing slightly disturbing tribal costumes, masked for one another and operating in secret on so many levels.The intensity of the movie was aided by many gory, disturbing scenes, always with some uncomfortable physicality. The sex scenes were steamy, yet tinged with the act of infidelity which made them aesthetically pleasing but morally cockeyed. The film ending and beginning with a drawn out shot of a scalpel slowly sliding through maternal flesh frames the plot with an uncomfortable emphasis on the nearness of bodily death. Another similar one follows Tuuli's playing with a knife with a crazy look in her eye, then a painfully slow shot that looks like blood dripping down her from her feet to the new hair dye she was rinsing, obviously implying self-mutilation. A scene that was particularly hard to watch for moral discomfort was when Saara tried to check Tuuli's cervix for pregnancy after drugging her, then plays it off as a continued sexual advance. The violation of the sleeping woman as well as the falsity of the encounter was deeply unsettling; it showed how far Saara had strayed morally and set the stage for the climax.Though the film possesses a lot of positive qualities, there were just a few things I personally didn't like. Outi Maenpaa plays the betrayed wife well, though her character didn't elicit much emotional attachment from me. I wanted to root for her, but it was hard to see what she wanted exactly and if she didn't know, there wasn't much to indicate her inner conflict. I still wanted to know what was to unfold, and even if the film kept the mystery of her thoughts, I still felt almost more attached to Tuuli. I suppose a film doesn't have to have all-around likable characters, but none of them in this film were portrayed in a positive light. Even Tuuli, in my opinion the most likable character, is cast in the shadow of the jealous wife's hatred and we see her as that despicable other woman.As an overall solid film, it does a good job of exploring what happens when the dark sides of deception undermine trusts and people get hurt. The drama and intensity of this uncomfortable film keep the viewer guessing what will transpire and this ill-fated love triangle is swept along by a current of snowballing events of a dangerous kind.

Musta Jää was a great film that had a unique turn of events that not only kept my attention, but revived my faith in the concept of original films. The long and short of the film is that Saara (as played by Outi Mäenpää) suspects her husband Leo (as played by Martti Suosalo) of adultery, so she does some snooping. Not only does she manage to track down his new flame, Tuuli (as played by Ria Kataja), but she actually befriends her, under an assumed name, of course. She then breaks it off with Leo to sow the seeds of friendship in Tuuli, to advance her plot of revenge, as well as get some martial arts training in the meantime. After several (mildly clichéd) girl-power bonding scenes, they become best friends (as far as Tuuli knows), and they try to solve each others' problems, culminating in Saara calling herself and leaving a nasty message on her machine, leading to a restraining order being placed on Tuuli and Leo breaking up with her, effectively ruining her life, especially since it turns out she's pregnant with his baby. However, through a complex, although perfectly plausible, twist of events, Leo accidentally drinks a spiked drink that was meant for Tuuli and ends up freezing to death after falling asleep at the wheel and crashing his car.All in all, this was, in my opinion, a very, very good film, one of the best I've seen this year, in fact. The twists the plot goes through were difficult for me to predict, which, given the number of movies I watch, is no small feat. For example, Saara's actions regarding Tuuli were almost counter-intuitive. I expected a confrontation right away, but instead, a friendship develops. This is something that I've never seen in any other films. Not only do they become friends, but they even have a minor lesbian experience towards the end of the film that was a beautiful combination of surprising and darkly funny, especially because Tuuli does feel a kind of love for Saara, but Saara has a burning hatred of Tuuli. The end of the movie was really good, too. After discovering Saara's plot and learning of Leo's death, Tuuli, in a shot at revenge, goes to the hospital after altering her appearance with hair dye and colored contacts (to avoid detection as she's not allowed in the hospital Saara works in, thanks to the restraining order) to get an abortion, but, after falling down a flight of stairs during a confrontation with Leo's sister (as played by Sara Paavolainen), she ends up getting both her life, and the life of her baby, saved by the now at-peace Saara, who wishes her "nothing but the best." The irony was just perfect. During the entirety of the movie, Saara was looking to kill Tuuli, but she ended up saving her. And it was on purpose, at that, as she recognized Tuuli's tattoo. I just felt that it was a perfectly twisted ending to a delightfully twisted movie. This movie gets good marks from me because, not only did it have an original and unpredictable sequence of events in the plot, but those events were all plausible. Everything that happened in the movie could definitely happen in real life, no question. There weren't any amazing coincidences or divine interventions, just actions and reactions, cause and effect. The choices the characters make are reasonable ones, too. No suicide missions, no flying off the handle, no superfluous, unreasonable aggression. Just people behaving as their situation dictates, yielding some amazing results. Other movies often have a weird turn of events or some crazy,unlikely coincidence to throw off the viewers, but everything here is perfectly plausible, if not likely, which I find most agreeable.Another great thing about this movie is the way it explores the complexities of human interactions. The strange, complex relationships between Tuuli, Saara, and Leo are a perfect example of the classic response adults give children: "It's not that simple." All three of the main characters had mixed emotions for the other two; they all loved and resented each other, albeit in different ways. Saara resented Tuuli for her relationship with Leo, but she still was good friends with her, and you could see how uneasy she was when she finally betrayed her. She also resented Leo for being unfaithful, while simultaneously loving him, as they had been together for a long time and were deeply in love. This same complexity is reciprocated in the other two characters and it not only adds interest to the movie, as you try to decode to what ends the characters are progressing, but it also adds an extra dimension, a sort of sub-plot, as you see not the events that drive the main storyline, but also the ever-shifting opinions of each other that drive the actions in the first place. While I don't agree with the genre of "Psychological Thriller" that this movie was assigned, I do agree that, like in those movies, you really have to put yourself in the characters' shoes, and try to feel what they feel as you watch the movie. This is, to me, just one more reason to like this thoroughly enjoyable movie.

I don't know and I kinda guess the characters don't know either. It's more like not willing to lose something, than to actually love it/him/her. You could also say, Love is in the air ... but somehow no one can touch it.While it has it's comedic moments too, it's more a (black) drama. At first you might guess where this is going, it seems to go the usual path that any movie with a plot like this goes (look for the plot summary, if you will, I won't spoil anything), but it does turn out to change it's path. Sometime the changes are very ridiculous, so you might have to stay with it. If you click out at some of the outrageous plot changes, you won't like the movie. The end is complete out-there (i.e. crazy), but the movie builds up to that point, so it's not a complete surprise. Still some might be shocked/appalled by it ...