ICE is an innovative independent thriller, shot in New York City, which centers on a revolutionary group plotting to attack a fascistic political regime. Using a fictitious war with Mexico as an allegory for the conflict in Vietnam, Kramer uses a documentary style to dramatize the inner workings, disputes and tensions within the group itself as they plan guerrilla attacks against the American government.
"Despite its doggedness of tone, especially in the characters' political rhetoric (you can bet that the Red Army Faction, Weather Underground and SLA all bought tickets), ICE remains surprisingly personal and beautifully somber. Its high-contrast, natural-light cinematography is breathtaking, part of the rich, lost tradition of 16 mm black-and-white image-making seen in the work of Frederick Wiseman, Robert Frank and Charles Burnett. Under Kramer's gaze, the familiar, run-down, Lindsay-era New York becomes as alien, melancholy and minatory as the Paris of Godard's Alphaville." —John Patterson, LA WEEKLY, Wednesday, Jun 18, 2008
"The politically radical fiction Ice made [Robert Kramer's] reputation." —CHRIS FUJIWARA, THE BOSTON PHOENIX
"This potent and grim SF thriller about urban guerrillas of the radical left, shot in the manner of a rough documentary in black and white, has an epic sweep to it... A searing, unnerving history lesson, it's an American counterpart to some of Jacques Rivette's conspiracy pictures, a desperate message found in a bottle." —JONATHAN ROSENBAUM, THE CHICAGO READER
"ICE can hold its own against the entire wave of committed filmmaking that accompanied the 1968 student strikes worldwide." —DVD Savant