Thin Ice

Thin Ice (originally released as The Convincer) is a 2011 American black comedy film directed by Jill Sprecher and starring Greg Kinnear, Alan Arkin and Billy Crudup. Plot summary Wisconsin insurance salesman Mickey Prohaska (Greg Kinnear) is in desperate financial straits. His wife JoAnn (Lea Thompson) has thrown him out of the house, and he is willing to do or say practically anything to sell anybody a policy. Mickey accompanies another insurance agent he has just met, Bob Egan (David Harbour), to the farm of an elderly man named Gorvy Hauer (Alan Arkin). The house is a mess and Gorvy is absent-minded, perhaps a tad senile. He does not have much money and, the little he has, he seems to keep in a jar. Mickey tries to sell the old man some insurance anyway. Gorvy also has an old violin. A man named Dahl (Bob Balaban), an appraiser from Chicago who has a shop filled with musical instruments, examines the violin and says it is somewhat rare and actually worth $25,000. Complications arise when Mickey's plan to steal the instrument is discovered by a small-time ex-con named Randy Kinney (Billy Crudup), who not only will not leave Mickey alone, but turns violent and bludgeons one of Gorvy's neighbors to death.