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The Iceman: Confessions of a Mafia Hitman

The Iceman is an appropriate title for this documentary, because the words of former Mafia enforcer Richard Kuklinski will chill you to the bone. Speaking in the monotonous drone of a man who has numbed himself with remorseless brutality, Kuklinski was first interviewed in 1991, five years after receiving consecutive life sentences for multiple murders. Specializing in the tidy use of cyanide, Kuklinski lived a double life, like the fictional hitmen in The Sopranos and Road to Perdition, passing as a “businessman” and devoted husband and father.

He describes numerous killings in graphic detail, expressing nearly tearful regret only when lamenting the deception of his family. A vicious product of child abuse, Kuklinski was visited again by HBO in 2001, but this shameless redundancy was an obvious attempt to capitalize on the Sopranos phenomenon. Fascinating as a firsthand record of Mafia killing, these otherwise unsavory interviews serve little purpose beyond morbid exploitation.

While leading the life of a happy family man in the New Jersey suburbs Richard Kuklinski was also living a bizarre double-life as a Mafia hit man. Kuklinski tells first hand how he brutally murdered men at close range dismembered and disposed of them before returning home to his family. This film offers extraordinary insight into the cold-heart of a killer.

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  1. 1:47:28 Are those not late model vehicles driving in the background? Come on HBO, I was at least expecting the attention to detail seen in your other “real” documentaries like Boardwalk Empire. There are so many contradictory statements and inconsistancies throughout these interviews that either this Kuklinski fellow is full of shit and the producers don’t feel like calling him out (read: cheap ratings), or those dead eyes of his are staring directly into a teleprompter! Hey Ritchie…how does a gun jam and yet still fire a projectile into someone’s face? Figured a seasoned hitman like you would know the difference between firing a weapon and not firing a weapon! Either way, this entire Iceman mania that has also just recently spawned a Hollywood movie is unfounded and pure sensationalism fed to the ravenous masses of dummies, ie. the people that contributed to the 9.5/10 this doc is currently rated here!

  2. Great documentary, in a horrifying kind of way.

    Why is “The Inner Planets” a related title?

  3. I have done a lot of reserch on the mafia, and nobody in the mafia ever heard of this guy, plus the mafia doesn’t pay hitmen for murder, thats how guys “make their bones”. This guy was a killer but also a proven liar trying to take credit for murders he didn’t commit. He tried to say Sammy Gravano paid him to kill a police officer, but when meeting with attorneys he wrote an extortion note then swallowed it. Gravano said he never met this guy or heard of him, he also said “why would we need this guy we were pretty good at murder”. The Iceman was full of hot air…

    • you’ve done a lot of research, but since when is the internet always right. Why would he lie when he truly has nothing else to lose? tell me that? and don’t say it’s because, he is a criminal. That is a shit excuse.

    • I read the book by Phillip Carlo. He claimed he’s the guy who whacked Roy DeMeo. And that he was one of the shooters who hit Paulie Castellano. Bullshit.

  4. The death penalty should be abolished not only in the States, but in the (few) other misguided countries where legalized murder is practiced.

  5. He is sooo lucky that he was in the State he was in. I find it odd and somewhat unsettling that a person who kills one person in Texas will get sentenced to death but a man who kills over 100 in a State with no death penalty get life in prison. Weird. I think capital punishment should be federally mandated and not on a state by state basis.

  6. He is sooo lucky that he was in the State he was in. I find it odd and somewhat unsettling that a person who kills one person in Texas will get sentenced to death but a man who kills over 100 in a State with no death penalty get life in prison. Weird. I think capital punishment should be federally mandated and not on a state by state basis.

  7. I remember seeing this on TV. A must watch if you are into crime stuff. He goes into details about several of the murders he committed and how he did them. Pretty mind blowing.

  8. Mind absolutely  blown!

    I was soo inspired i composed a song about it!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRxxe0tO61c&feature=autoshare

  9. shit thats one fucking evil motherfucker