Winter of Frozen Dreams is based on a sensational Wisconsin murder case in the late 1970s. But while it may have been a big story in the local media back then, this film does nothing at all to convey any of that importance or appeal. These filmmakers manage to conjure up one interesting character, but fail to find anything interesting about the murders, the investigation or the trial. They also couldn't come up with any larger point to this story, leaving you to wonder why they bothered to make this movie.
Perhaps realizing that they didn't have a point or an compelling story to tell, these filmmakers largely construct this film around the narrative technique of the flashback. It starts in 1980, with the verdicts being read in two murder charges against Barbara Hoffman (Thora Birch), then flashes back to 1977 and bald, middle-aged loser Harry Bergee coming home from work in the winter. The story then jumps forward to Jerry Davies (Bredan Sexton III) leading the cops to Bergee's dead body in a snow bank. As aging detective Chuck Lulling (Keith Carradine) rather ineffectually investigates Harry's death, more flashbacks are used to fill in the details of the relationship between Barbara, Jerry and Harry. Barbara was a brilliant college student who dropped out and became a prostitute. Harry was one of her johns that Barbara convinced to leave her everything in his will. Jerry is Barbara's supposed boyfriend that she summons to her home one night, telling him that she found Harry's dead body in her bathroom. Barbara blames her pimp (Dean Winters) for dumping Harry's body on her. After the story meanders along with no sense of any forward movement and some confusion over whether you're watching a flashback or a flashback within a flashback, Winter of Frozen dreams eventually turns on the question on whether Jerry's love for Barbara is more important to him than anything, even his own life.
That little recap I just wrote is about 87% more fascinating than the actual film. This thing is slow and lifeless. Though it has many scenes with Detective Lulling, it does an awful job of telling the story of the police investigation. At one point, Barbara is arrested by the police and there's absolutely no explanation given for why she was arrested at that point or what evidence the arrest was based on. The impression given is that these Wisconsin cops were just sitting around, eating donuts and waiting for someone to confess.
The movie is not much better at dealing with these characters. Barbara begins the story as a beautiful enigma and never becomes more than that. In his only significant scenes, Harry might as well have "victim" tattooed on his forehead. Detective Lulling looks like he was pressed out of the same cookie cutter that's produced every aging-cop-close-to-retirement in a jillion other crime dramas. Most of the 50some other characters in the film don't even have names, let alone their own personalities.
The only character with anything going for him is Jerry. He's essentially a younger version of the sort of loser that Harry became and he thinks that Barbara coming into his life is the best thing that every has or will happen to him. There's a part of the story where Jerry takes Barbara home to meet his mom, and the silent resentment between mother and son helps you to understand why Jerry feels like having Barbara somehow redeems his sorry existence. And when Jerry starts to figure out that Barbara isn't what he convinced himself she was, Brendan Sexton III does a nice job letting us see Jerry's need for her battle against his meager self-respect. However, the movie never spends enough time with Jerry to make his part of this tale more than mildly engaging.
According to information on the DVD, this case was the first televised murder trial in the history of Wisconsin. Yet that part of the story is totally ignored. There's also no effort made to connect this story to any larger perspective on where or when it occurred or give any reason whatsoever for why this particular murder case should ever have been made into a film.
Winter of Frozen Dreams isn't really a bad film so much as it's an unnecessary one. It's competently made but did not need to be made. The use of flashbacks to try and make the story appear more complicated than it was doesn't fix that problem. I f you're a Wisconsinite who remembers the Hoffman murder trial, you might find it vaguely entertaining. There's not enough here for anyone else to enjoy.
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