Iceman is an apt title for these two HBO specials, because the words of former Mafia enforcer Richard Kuklinski will chill you to the bone.
Kuklinski, speaking in monotonous rumblings, drugged himself with relentless brutality, and was first interviewed in 1991, five years after he was sentenced to life in prison for multiple murders .
Kuklinski, who specializes in cyanide cleaning, lives a double life as the fictional killer in “The Sopranos” and “Perdition Road,” as a “business man” and as a devoted husband and father. He described countless murders in vivid detail, and only when he bemoaned his family’s deceit did he almost shed tears of regret.
A vicious outgrowth of child abuse, Kuklinski was revisited by HBO in 2001, but this brazen dismissal was an apparent attempt to capitalize on the Sopranos phenomenon. As first-hand accounts of mafia killings, these mesmerizing interviews serve little more than pathological exploitation.
Directed by: Arthur Ginsberg
