By JOHN ANDERSON/ wsj.com, Feb. 17, 2012

In olden, golden Hollywood, Greg Kinnear might have made a comfortable living acting in Frank Capra movies, playing the kind of oily characters that runaway heiresses met on buses, or whom Gary Cooper had to, eventually, pop on the snoot. No one needs to be told that it's a more complicated world now, but that should be good for Mr. Kinnear. He's a complicated actor. He's good at doing "unlikable" without being unlikable, and is perhaps made even more likable by his willingness to gamble with our affections.

It is Mr. Kinnear's slippery charm that keeps "Thin Ice" from sinking into the frosty Wisconsin slush toward which it seems to be heading from the start. Although the credited director is Jill Sprecher ("Clockwatchers," "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing"), she, her editor, her composer and her sister/co-writer Karen were reportedly cut out of the process that altered the film since its well-regarded debut at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. The film as it now exists is being released by a company called ATO, which stands for Art Takes Over. If anyone knows Art, we'd like to talk to him.

Changes aside, "Thin Ice" assembles quite a few characters intended to try our patience, en route to a denouement that really tries our patience. As Mickey Prohaska, Mr. Kinnear plays a Midwestern insurance agent short on cash and even shorter on scruples. At a sales convention, he underwhelms his colleagues with puffed-up patter, dismisses the idea of giving his hardworking secretary a better job because of the limitations of the "female brain" and then displays his own astute powers of observation by picking up an overserved blonde who steals his wallet. Rather than admit his indiscretion, he blames the maid, earning him a sidelong glance from the hotel manager, and the viewer's contempt. His wife (Lea Thompson) has already kicked him out, because she simply can't trust him. We share her sentiments. Whatever he gets, he probably has coming.

But the twist to "Thin Ice" is that Mickey the shmoe gets what he doesn't deserve. No one does. Yes, he tries to cheat his very decent new hire, Bob (David Harbour), out of a sale by going to see Bob's forgetful client Gorvy Hauer (Alan Arkin) and selling him property insurance. Learning that Gorvy is in possession of a very valuable German violin—one for which a visiting Chicago instrument dealer (Bob Balaban) is offering $25,000—Mickey tries to steal it, to get himself out of the financial hole being dug by his incipient divorce. He even buys a cheap violin and uses shoe polish to make it old, thinking he can swap fiddles and fool the senile Gorvy. (Why does Mr. Arkin sound like Dr. Strangelove?). But when Mickey and Randy (Billy Crudup), an unstable locksmith with a dubious past, get caught in Gorvy's house, and Randy uses a hammer to keep the witness quiet, Mickey finds himself on very thin ice indeed.

The murder comes out of left field and any animosity we have for Mickey exits the park entirely: Mr. Crudup makes Randy a walking nightmare, a font of unpredictable violence and rage, whose inspiration might have been Ray Liotta in "Something Wild," or even the Robert De Niro of "Mean Streets" or "Raging Bull": The psychopath who enjoys his psychosis. What happens with "Thin Ice," after its zigs and zags, is an ending with too little impact and too much explanation of all we just saw happen. But there are moments when Mr. Kinnear does a pretty deft emotional juggling act, in a movie that otherwise has a lot in common with ice fishing.