Boy, do I love me some Michael Shannon. Whether a bit role or a lead, the dude’s always on. Plus, he’s only seemed to get better with each movie he takes on, regardless of the quality of the film itself. With his latest, I’m excited to see him not only as a lead, but with such an array of facial hair.

Yet, I remain cautious. The film is backed by Millennium Films, a production company with one of the worst track records in Hollywood – always leaving me sting worse, because it gets such high-profile stars to make such abysmally bad movies. I’ve complained about them as a company on here plenty (I’m convinced that they lure stars with high paychecks and very short shooting schedules), but check out their credits and you’ll see plenty of awful movies with big stars which you’ll recognize – movies that I’m convinced were written in undergraduate screenplay courses. And probably received a C- from a forgiving professor. At best.

Back to the topic at hand, I’m hoping The Iceman bucks the trend and turns out to be good. It’s impossible to tell from the trailer (it looks sloppy), but the story is interesting enough (if not overly familiar), following a family man and contract killer played by Shannon. The supporting cast of Winona Ryder, Ray Liotta, Chris Evans, David Schwimmer, and Stephen Dorff also solidifies that this could either turn out great… or be a complete disaster. The film will be screened out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, so I’m sure we will be hearing more about it soon.