Producers: Greg Silverman, Jon Berg, Jonas Katzenstein and Maximilian Leo   Director: Brian Kirk  Screenplay: Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb   Cast: Emma Thompson, Judy Greer, Marc Menchaca, Laurel Marsden, Gaia Wise, Cúán Hosty-Blaney, Dalton Leeb, Paul Hamilton, Lloyd Hutchinson and Brían F. O’Byrne   Distributor: Vertical

Grade: C

One wonders what possessed Emma Thompson to choose to star in this silly action thriller set in a remote part of Minnesota during the most frigid months of the year.  The chance to assume the leading role of a resourceful woman who foils a dastardly plot single-handedly while also fulfilling a solemn pledge might have been an irresistible temptation.  Or perhaps it was the opportunity it afforded for her daughter Gaia Wise to play the character’s younger self in flashbacks that tipped the scales.  Certainly it can’t have been the location—what looks like genuinely bone-chilling Finland standing in for the North Star State; the shoot can’t have been an easy one.

Nor could have it been the script by Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb which, though it keeps Thompson on screen almost constantly, proves a frail “Die Hard”-in-the-snow contrivance in which the plot holes and implausibilities are almost as numerous as the snowflakes.

Thompson is Barb Lundquist, whom we see leaving the family bait-and-tackle store one morning in her truck, carrying an old tin box of evident importance to her.  Her destination turns out to be a lake where, as periodic flashbacks show, she (Wise) and her husband Karl (Cúán Hosty-Blaney), enjoyed a wonderful time fishing on the ice many years ago.  But elderly Karl (Paul Hamilton), we eventually learn, has passed away after a debilitating illness, and their lawyer (Lloyd Hutchinson) has just read his will to Barb.

She’s apparently not been to the lake in years, so she stops to ask directions of a man (Marc Menchaca) she glimpses outside an isolated cabin.  Surprised by the visit, he grudgingly points the way, and she’s off, but not before noticing blood on the snow, which he explains by explaining he’s killed a deer.  Once she’s gotten to the lake, intending to set up the shack she’s brought along on the ice, a shocking scene plays out.  A young woman (Laurel Marsden), her hands tied behind her back, runs out onto the lake, pursued by the man Barb’s just spoken to, wielding a rifle.  He forces the girl back into the woods, inexplicably not noticing Barb’s truck—and the watching Barb—close by. 

Barb immediately goes back to the cabin on foot, and after a cautious investigation finds that the girl is tied up in the basement.  Scrawling a note telling her that she’ll be back, Barb goes off to seek help.  Unfortunately the cops are far off, leaving Barb to her own devices.  And the man is not alone.  Indeed he’s dominated by his wife (Judy Greer), a mentally unstable woman with a terminal illness who has gruesome plans for their captive, and who’s much more cunning and lethal than her husband.

What follows is a protracted cat-and-mouse exercise in which Barb tries desperately to save the girl, whose name is revealed to be Leah, and is willing to endanger herself in the process—indeed, at one point she’s shot, but in the tradition of such heroic figures she soldiers on after some self-treatment.  Episode after episode follows, with her outsmarting the villains at every turn, if only by inches.  (A trap she contrives beside the shed she sets up on the ice is especially clever, and puts the villains at a temporary disadvantage.)  At one point she comes upon two hunters—played by Brian F. O’Byrne and co-writer Leeb.  But though they momentarily add some suspense through the suggestion that they might be in league with the captors, instead they become the script’s version of that old cliché, the outsiders (be they police or civilians) who prove inept when it comes to actually helping. 

It all culminates, of course, in a lengthy confrontation on the ice in which the woman’s plan for Leah are revealed and she and Barb have their final face-off, with the latter showing how far she’ll go to do her duty to both the girl and her late husband.

At first Thompson overdoes the Marge Gunderson accent, but as the picture goes on she moderates it, until it practically disappears; she certainly flings herself into the role’s physical demands, even if Barb’s resilience (and luck) sometimes stretch credulity right up to, if not past, the breaking point.  Greer is ravenously manic and Menchaca a dim-bulb doofus as the villainous pair, while Wise and Hosty-Blaney gambol about engagingly as the young Lundquist lovers and O’Byrne and Leeb are suitably dense.  The crew does a good job of capturing the bleak environment, with David Hindle’s spare production design dovetailing with the ice-cold locations, and Christopher Ross’ cinematography accentuates the effect with images that are bleached of color to the point that many seem to be black-and-white.  Volker Bertelmann’s score does its part in revving up the action, but editor Tim Murrel sometimes lets things go slack and overextended.           

“Dead of Winter” is perhaps worth a watch for Thompson, but otherwise it’s a pretty ridiculous affair.