Martin Sensmeier Archives

Review: ‘Icefall’ (2025), starring Joel Kinnaman, Cara Jade Myers, Martin Sensmeier, DeVaughn Nixon, Frida Gustavsson, Oliver Trevena, Will Fletcher, Danny Huston and Graham Greene

January 19, 2026

by Carla Hay

Joel Kinnaman and Cara Jade Myers in “Icefall” (Photo courtesy of Aura Entertainment)

“Icefall” (2025)

Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky

Some language in Niitsíʼpowahsin with subtitles

Culture Representation: Taking place in Montana, the action film “Icefall” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Native Americans and a few African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: A poacher and a game preserve warden become unlikely allies after the poacher finds $20 million in stolen cash, and they are both hunted by the criminals who are looking for the cash.

Culture Audience: “Icefall” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and subpar action movies that have gritty violence and hokey dialogue.

Danny Huston and Frida Gustavsson in “Icefall” (Photo courtesy of Aura Entertainment)

In the low-quality action flick “Icefall,” a cave-dwelling poacher is hunted by criminals because he found $20 million of their stolen cash. You can easily predict who will live and who will die, long before the movie ends, based on who has unbelievable luck and who makes the stupidest decisions. There are moments of suspense in some of the chase scenes, but most of the other scenes look too fake to be credible.

Directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky, “Icefall” was written by Steve Isles and George Mahaffey. The movie takes place in Montana. “Icefall” was actually filmed in Bulgaria. One of the main characters in “Icefall” is a game preserve warden, who happens to be Native American from the Blackfoot tribe. The movie awkwardly tries to incorporate Blackfoot culture into the movie in a way that looks more forced than organic to the story.

“Icefall” begins by showing the robbery that resulted in the $20 million in cash being stolen. Six thieves invade a pawn shop, where they tie up almost all the employees, and then shoot off the left ear of one of the employees, to force her to tell them the combination to the safe with the cash. After stealing the cash, the thieves lock all the employees in the safe room and blow it up.

Who are these ruthless criminals? You won’t learn much about them during the entire story, except that they work for a mysterious wealthy mogul named Rhodes (played by Danny Huston), who has other people do the dirty work for him unless he feels it’s absolutely necessary to get involved himself. The thieves gather in a hangar-sized warehouse for the next step of the plan: transporting the cash by plane to an unnamed location.

The criminals who are part of this major heist are Drake (played by DeVaughn Nixon), Ellis (played by Will Fletcher), Pen (played by Martin Sensmeier), Carl (played by Bashar Ramal), Sirena (played by Frida Gustavsson) and Dax (played by Oliver Trevena). Dax and Sirena are a couple. Drake is the chief henchman in charge of this team that does the dirty work.

Carl has been tasked with flying the small private plane to transport the cash. He will be flying by himself. It’s the first sign that these thieves aren’t as smart as they think they are because Carl could easily steal all the cash for himself, and there would be nobody on the plane to stop him. At any rate, this possibility won’t become an issue because the plane’s engine malfunctions, causing the plane to crash in a rural area of Red Rock, Montana. Carl dies in the crash.

Five months later, during a bitterly cold and icy winter, longtime poacher Harlan Fanshaw (played by Joel Kinnaman) sets out from the cave where he lives to look for food. Harlan is an Afghanistan War veteran who lives by himself in an isolated area of Red Rock. It’s later revealed in the story why Harlan chose to have this secluded life.

While walking on an ice-covered lake, Harlan finds the body of Carl trapped underneath the ice. When he breaks the ice to retrieve the body, Harlan also sees the suitcase filled with the $20 million cash. It must’ve been a waterproof suitcase because the cash is perfectly preserved. Harlan instinctively knows that this cash is probably stolen. He decides to take the cash back to his cave and waits to see what happens.

But there would be no “Icefall” movie if the inevitable didn’t happen: The thieves come looking for that cash. It’s never explained why it took them five months to figure out to look for the cash in Red Rock, Montana. Black box information on planes can be retrieved a lot sooner than that, but the movie never shows if the plane that crashed had a traceable device. Viewers are supposed to believe that somehow, the criminals found out the general area where the plane crashed and went looking for the cash in the Red Rock area.

Meanwhile, a game preserve warden named Ani Bayawala (played by Cara Jade Myers), who works for Montana’s Rock County, is very familiar with Harlan because they’ve had several run-ins in the past because of his poaching. Ani is a very “by the book” warden who works closely with a county sheriff named Raleigh (played by Trevor Van Uden), who is condescending to Ani. Raleigh is more willing to bend the rules and doesn’t want to alienate tourists that the area depends on for the area’s economy.

Ani is a single mother to an underage son named Tim, who is ill with a fever and has to stay home to recover. A woman named Carol (played by Joyce Grey-Carter), who is from the same Blackfoot tribe, used to take care of Ani when Ani was a child. Carol is looking after Tim while Ani is working. Ani doesn’t have a work partner and usually does patrols by herself.

Ani encounters Harlan on the ice, in an area that is supposed to be off-limits. Harlan says he’s looking for his wife. Ani sees that Harlan has the suitcase full of cash. He tells her that he found the cash, but she doesn’t believe him. She tells Harlan that she has to detain him and take him to the sheriff’s office for an investigation. Ani places Harlan in handcuffs and puts him in the back of her vehicle.

On the way back to the sheriff’s office, Ani stops to help a stranded driver on the ice. But then, all of a sudden, here come the criminals. Drake, Pen, Ellis and Sirena drive up in a Chevy SUV. The stranded driver starts a shootout, which leaves the driver dead and Drake shot in a shoulder.

Ani and Harlan escape in Ani’s patrol car. The suitcase of cash falls in the ice. Ani calls Sheriff Raleigh to report what happened and asks him to send help. The SUV has a flat tire from the shootout, but the criminals replace it with a spare tire. But then, the SUV sinks in the lake when the ice cracks.

Ellis almost dies in the water, but his three cohorts are able to pull him out of the SUV. They call to get help from their colleague Dax, who shows up later with his own car. The rest of the movie is about the criminals trying to find Ani and Harlan. And what about the suitcase full of cash? The criminals try to find that too.

It’s all a cluttered and jumbled mess. Observant viewers will be wondering during the ridiculous chase scenes, “Didn’t Ani call for help from the sheriff’s office a while ago? What’s taking the sheriff so long to send help?” That question is somewhat answered in the movie, but it’s not very plausible.

In between the shootouts and chase scenes, “Icefall” eventually reveals Harlan’s backstory. Someone who knows Harlan well but doesn’t like him is a respected Blackfoot tribe elder named Oz (played by Graham Greene), who has a personal grudge against Harlan, for reasons that are explained in the movie. (Greene died in September 2025. “Icefall” is one of the last movies that he did.)

The acting performances are adequate, but “Icefall” has such a ridiculous plot, these performances can’t help the atrocious screenplay and sloppy directing. Kinnaman and Huston, who are the most well-known members of the cast, are doing more of the same types of characters they’ve done before in so many other movies: Kinnaman is the troubled protagonist with a shady past, while Huston is a scowling villain. The ending of “Icefall” is so corny, it diminishes all the vicious and bloody violence that came before it, making the movie an uneven and unremarkable dud that is easily forgotten.

Aura Entertainment released “Icefall” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on November 4, 2025.

Review: ‘9 Bullets,’ starring Lena Headey and Sam Worthington

May 11, 2022

by Carla Hay

“9 Bullets”

Directed by Gigi Gaston

Culture Representation: Taking place in various parts of the West Coast and Midwest of the United States, the dramatic film “9 Bullets” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some black people, Latinos, Asians and multiracial people) representing the working-class, middle-class and criminal underground.

Culture Clash: A former burlesque dancer goes on the run with an orphaned 11-year-old boy, whose family was killed by gangsters.

Culture Audience: “9 Bullets” will appeal primarily to people who don’t mind watching poorly made and implausible crime dramas.

Sam Worthington in “9 Bullets” (Photo courtesy of Screen Media Films)

Fans of the 1980 crime drama “Gloria” (starring Gena Rowlands in the title role) might be repulsed if they have the misfortune of wasting time watching “9 Bullets,” which is a sloppy and pathetic imitation of that classic movie. It’s not an official remake of “Gloria,” but “9 Bullets” copies so many things about “Gloria,” it’s essentially a rehash of the same story, with names and locations changed. It’s truly unfortunate that “9 Bullets” star Lena Headey has gone from the glory of starring in the Emmy-winning “Game of Thrones” series to diminishing her talent by starring in bottom-of-the-barrel trash such as “9 Bullets.”

Written and directed by Gigi Gaston, “9 Bullets” rips off “Gloria” by having this concept: A “tough woman” with a shady past goes on the run with an orphaned boy, whose family was killed by gangsters because his father betrayed the gang. “Gloria” (written and directed by John Cassavetes) takes place on the East Coast of the U.S., mostly in New York City and briefly in Pittsburgh. “9 Bullets” takes place in the Midwest and West Coast regions of the U.S., with a road trip that goes from California to Utah, Montana and North Dakota. The woman on the run in each movie keeps repeating how much she doesn’t like kids, which is supposed to be the irony when she inevitably develops maternal feelings for the boy who unexpectedly ends up in her care.

In “9 Bullets” (which was formerly titled “Gypsy Moon”), Headey portrays a very jaded and abrasive dancer-turned-author named Gypsy (no explanation is given if that’s her real name or an alias), who lives in Santa Clarita, California. She’s a soon-to-be-retired burlesque dancer because she’s gotten a book deal to write her memoir, tentatively titled “Another Dance.” Throughout the movie, while she’s running for her life, Gypsy keeps her laptop computer with her so she can work on her memoir in between dodging bullets.

The movie’s opening scene shows Gypsy on her house’s front porch while she’s reading the book publishing contract that she’s received in the mail. She looks up at the sky and says, “I promise not to fuck it up this time.” It’s at this point in the movie that you know a loved one in Gypsy’s life has passed away, and she feels a lot of guilt when it comes to that person.

Because “9 Bullets” also tries to make Gypsy look sexy, the movie has her doing “one last performance” at the seedy bar where she works. The movie’s depiction of Gypsy’s burlesque dancing is showing some slow-motion shots of a woman’s barely clad rear end (it could have been a body double) and Headey doing some lackluster walking on a stage in a tacky-looking, tight-fitting outfit. Gypsy thinks that after this last performance, she’ll be leaving behind her life of working in sleazy bars and dealing with criminal losers, so that she can start a new life as a successful author who goes on vacation cruises. But there would be no “9 Bullets” movie if that happened.

On the night of this last performance, Gypsy gets a call from a friend named Ralph Stein (played by Zachary Mooren), who at the moment is frantically speeding down a street in his car, with his widowed mother (played by Marlene Forte) and young adult daughter Caroline (played by Stephanie Arcila) as passengers. Ralph is terrified because he has stolen money from a vengeful gangster named Jack (played by Sam Worthington), who has sent some of his goons to kill Ralph and Ralph’s family. Someone who’s not in the car is Ralph’s 11-year-old son Sam (played by Dean Scott Vazquez), who minutes earlier, got a call from Ralph to start doing the emergency plan that they talked about, in case they need to run for their lives.

Ralph tells Gypsy over the phone that he “messed up” with Jack, and he begs Gypsy to protect Sam if anything happens to the family. As Ralph and his family race to their house to pick up Sam, who is home alone, the car is stopped on a residential street by Jack’s thugs, who shoot and kill everyone in the car. Sam is hiding outside nearby with the family’s pet dog Moses (a Chihuahua mixed breed), so Sam witnesses his family being murdered.

Jack’s murderous henchman are looking for a computer tablet, but they can only find a laptop in the car, so they steal it before driving away. A terrified and sobbing Sam goes back to his house, where Gypsy finds him. Sam tells her what he saw, and they go on the run, with the dog coming along for the ride. (In “Gloria,” the murdered family had a pet cat, but the orphaned boys in both movies have a physical resemblance with dark, curly hair. In “Gloria,” John Adames played the role of the orphaned boy, who was named Phil.)

At first, Gypsy wants nothing to do with taking care of this kid. Sam has a clergyman uncle in North Dakota named Rabbi Stein (played by John Ales), who is resistant to take custody of Sam, because the rabbi says he’s overwhelmed with the responsibility of taking care of his own kids. And then there’s the fact that the gang is looking to kill Sam too. Rabbi Stein reluctantly agrees to take custody of Sam, but the rabbi says he needs more time to prepare for Sam’s arrival.

It’s just an excuse for this movie to have a prolonged road trip. Gypsy lies to Sam and says that his uncle wants Sam to live with him, but Sam senses that she’s being dishonest. Sam then proceeds to cry, whine and pout for much of the road trip. Gypsy does hardly anything to comfort him because, as she tells Sam repeatedly, she’s not good with kids. But when Sam mentions that he’s a cryptocurrency whiz, suddenly Gypsy finds that this kid can be useful.

This poorly written movie has an odd detour where Gypsy goes to Jack’s mansion, with the intention of seducing him to back off from killing Sam. Gypsy leaves Sam behind in a motel, but she illogically takes Moses the dog with her on this visit. She wants to convince Jack that she doesn’t know where Sam is. This “seduction” is just a thinly veiled reason for “9 Bullets” to have a not-very-sexy sex scene, where Gypsy has nudity, but Jack doesn’t. Typical sexist double standard in a trashy movie.

Jack and Gypsy were in a relationship years ago, but she dumped him because he constantly cheated on Gypsy and was too possessive of her. Jack now tells Gypsy that he wants to get back together with her, but she refuses. It makes absolutely no sense for Gypsy to have the dog with her during this visit. The dog is only there so the movie can have a heinous scene where Jack threatens to steal the dog and kill it after Gypsy rejects him.

Jack is a stereotypical American gang boss in a movie, but Worthington (who’s Australian in real life) struggles with having a convincing American accent. Jack lounges around his house, barks orders at his underlings, and he has at least one female lover who’s willing to do whatever he wants her to do. Her name is Lisa (played by Emma Holzer), who helps take care of Jack’s horses. Later in the story, Lisa has one of the worst-delivered lines in the movie, when she smirks, “Never send a man to do a woman’s job,” after she commits a violent act.

Jack has three main goons doing the dirty work for this assassination. Mike (played by Chris Mullinax), the bossiest one, can be as ruthless as Jack. Tommy (played by Cam Gigandet) is dimwitted and cruel. Eddie (played by Martin Sensmeier) is loyal and has the most compassion out of all the thugs. There’s a scene in the movie where Eddie could’ve easily murdered someone, but he doesn’t. Eventually, Jack goes on the road with his thugs to look for Gypsy and Sam too, because Jack suddenly shows up in a few scenes where he’s with his henchmen in chasing after these two targets.

La La Anthony has an embarrassing and idiotic role in the movie, and her questionable acting skills don’t do much to help. She plays a sassy stripper named Tasmin, who was taking a nap in the back seat of a Porsche SUV when it gets stolen by Gypsy, who foolishly did not see Tasmin when Gypsy stole the car. Tasmin eventually figures out that Gypsy and Sam are in deadly trouble, but Tasmin acts as if it’s completely normal to tag along with these two strangers who have assassins looking for them.

Barbara Hershey has a thankless role as a former Princeton University professor named Lacey, who offers her Utah home as a place for Gypsy and Sam to temporarily hide. How does Gypsy know Lacey? Years ago, Gypsy was a Princeton student until she dropped out for reasons explained when bitter and emotionally damaged Gypsy ends up telling Sam her sob story.

Of course, in a silly movie like “9 Bullets,” Lacey is not quite the mild-mannered retired professor that she first appears to be. Headey and Hershey are accomplished actresses who deserve much better than this dreck, which is filled with plot holes, nonsensical scenes (including one where Jack and his thugs easily let Gypsy get away), horrendous editing, and acting that ranges from mediocre to truly unwatchable. Headey seems to be doing her best to commit to her role as Gypsy, but it’s a lost cause because of the movie’s low-quality screenplay and direction.

And why is this movie called “9 Bullets?” There’s a scene where Sam lectures Gypsy, by saying: “You better let someone love you before it’s too late.” Gypsy replies, “I’m a cat with nine lives. I’ll be fine.” Sam asks, “What does that mean?” Gypsy replies, “It takes nine bullets to kill me.” At 91 minutes long, it takes “9 Bullets” this amount of time to kill any hope of being entertained by a movie that amounts to nothing more than awful and pointless garbage.

Screen Media Films released “9 Bullets” in select U.S. cinemas, on digital and VOD on April 22, 2022. The movie is set for release on Blu-ray and DVD on June 7, 2022.