"A Passion For Murder" (or "Black Ice", as it is listed on here) is pretty much a neo-noir road-movie, which means it should add up to something like a mystery thriller. But it doesn't. Throughout the film there's no suspense to speak of and the plot is hardly anything intriguing. The film just hums along without many problems, really, and as mentioned before, Michael Nouri, Joanna Pacula & Michael Ironside manage to carry everything just fine with their three leading performances.
Nouri plays Ben Shorr, a cab driver/aspiring writer. One night he picks up Vanessa (Joanna Pacula) who's gotten herself into a heap of trouble, demanding that Shorr should drive her all the way from Detroit to Seattle. All this while being chased by the cold-blooded Quinn (Michael Ironside), who has a score of his own to settle with Vanessa.
Ms. Pacula brings a lot of sex appeal to the table (and gets very naked early on in the film, during an extended sex scene). Nouri is convincing enough and Ironside is always entertaining as the bad guy. The rest of the supporting cast gives inferior performances. Only Mickey Jones is worth mentioning, as the taxi company owner.
In the end, the climax boils down to a very dull shoot-out between the threesome. Something you can predict from the moment their chase begins. People say they're FBI or CIA, wave a badge and all, but in the end, who cares? "A Passion For Murder" is nothing special, but at the end of the ride I can't bring myself to flunk this little movie. It's not a badly made film or anything and it's an okay form of distraction from every day life for 90 minutes long. The main purpose of most pulp fiction, anyway.
