Dead of Winter review – Emma Thompson is an ice cool, unlikely hero

If you’ve seen almost any action movie classic you’ll be familiar with the self-surgery trope. Usually it means your Jason Bourne or John Wick or whomever has been injured and must briefly lay low to patch themselves up. It’s an efficient way of showing that while our hero may be physically vulnerable they are mentally strong enough to do what needs to be done. 

For one-man army John Rambo, it’s an occupational hazard. In First Blood (1982), the handle of his wicked combat knife conceals a fishing line so the combat veteran can sew up a deep gash on his arm. In the more bombastic Rambo III (1988), he cauterises an abdominal shrapnel wound by sprinkling it with gunpowder and putting a burning stick to it.

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Set in the remote wilds of northern Minnesota, Dead of Winter sees Emma Thompson rather unexpectedly joining the DIY NHS action hero club. When her character Barb is winged by a rifle shot midway through the film, the pensioner has the presence of mind to pack her injury with snow. Later, as Barb contemplates suturing the nasty-looking wound with an improvised needle and thread, she gives herself a pep talk. “Just like sewing a quilt,” she murmurs, in her sing-song Minnesota twang. 

This is not Thompson doing a Taken, where a crinkly avenger demonstrates to cocky youngsters that you can be eligible for a bus pass and still kick some serious ass. This is a wrong-place, wrong-time sort of situation. We first meet Barb as a grieving widow in drab overalls and woolly hat trucking north through the wilderness to honour her husband’s last wishes. When she pulls up at a remote cabin to ask a sullen guy in a camo jacket (Marc Menchaca) for directions, a streak of blood in the snow puts her on edge. “Deer,” responds the stranger, and in hunter-friendly Minnesota that is likely explanation enough.

Barb was right to be suspicious. After setting up camp on a frozen lake, she witnesses Camo Jacket on the shoreline chasing down a teenage girl and dragging her away. Without a phone signal and hours away from civilisation, Barb is the only person in a position to help. So despite being a quilt-sewing widow who seemingly can’t even bring herself to curse, that’s what she does, cautiously surveilling the cabin and signalling to the young girl that she is not alone. 

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Enter Judy Greer – so often the loyal best friend in rom-coms and family dramas – resplendent in a purple snowsuit. Greer’s highly-strung, straggly-haired Purple Lady (as she is credited) is clearly the brains of this kidnap operation. But she is constantly sucking on a pain-relieving fentanyl lollipop, suggesting she has her own problems. Barb cannot be allowed to interfere in Purple Lady’s plans, so she and Camo Jacket vow to hunt her down and take her out. She’s just some old lady. How hard can it be?

It’s been almost 30 years since the Coen brothers made their Oscar breakthrough with Fargo (1996), but that singular film casts a long shadow. Dead of Winter director Brian Kirk and screenwriters Nicholas Jacobson-Larson and Dalton Leeb must have known that by crafting a snowy Minnesota-set crime thriller with a good-hearted but deeply determined woman at its centre they would probably invite some comparisons. 

But despite Barb’s “you betcha” local accent – which Thompson manages pretty convincingly even in many moments of high stress – Dead of Winter differentiates itself with a recurring flashback structure. In these romantic interludes we see the young Barb (played by Thompson’s real daughter Gaia Wise) being courted by her eventual husband, shading in more facets of her character and hinting at why she might be so determined to protect a young innocent.

Perhaps because none of the characters are operating at peak efficiency, it is a cat-and-mouse game characterised by slip-ups, missteps and lucky breaks. But if the plotting can be haphazard, the atmospheric wilderness setting – with Finland standing in for Minnesota – and intensity of the performances elevates the material. Thompson must walk a tightrope between being terrified and determined, often at the same time. Later this year, she will pull on a cool leather jacket to play a cynical Oxford private eye in Down Cemetery Road, the Apple TV+ adaptation of Mick ‘Slow Horses’ Herron’s debut novel. But her empathetic portrayal of Barb is badass in its own way.

Dead of Winter is in cinemas now.

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