‘The Ice Harvest” is on the verge of being a dark, cult semi-classic for grown-ups. It’s got the right actors – notably John Cusack and Billy Bob Thornton – and the right director, “Groundhog Day” guy Harold Ramis. It has a depressed hero, a robbery, guns and Christmas Eve.

And it’s not enough. Something’s missing in this sometimes funny movie, which lands with a very soft thud.

Cusack plays a lawyer working for a crooked businessman (Randy Quaid) in Wichita, Kan. In cahoots with a professional criminal (Billy Bob Thornton), Cusack has just spirited away $2 million from under his boss’s nose.

It’s Christmas Eve, and nasty outside, and the two thieves have only to wait out the day to escape with their loot. In the meantime, Cusack flirts with the owner (Connie Nielsen) of a strip club, and spots a chance to get in her good graces – and maybe entice her to leave town with him?

He gets derailed by a series of disasters, especially the bumptious presence of his drunken pal, played at full alcoholic throttle by Oliver Platt. Like Cusack, Platt is right in tune with the movie’s mix of comedy, exhaustion and pathos. A scene where he stumbles into Christmas dinner with his ex-wife and their kids is horrifying and weird and one of the most interesting scenes in the picture.

The movie needs more Billy Bob Thornton, though. He shares billing with Cusack and is prominently placed in the ads, but Thornton isn’t in the film nearly long enough. He and Cusack have a funny deadpan chemistry, but the ultimate destination for their partnership feels like a wrong move.

Director Ramis cut his teeth on knockabout comedy but he’s tried different things in his career, and this script by Robert Benton and Richard Russo (who together made films from the latter’s novels “Nobody’s Fool” and “Empire Falls”) is definitely different for him. The problem is, “The Ice Harvest” is so low-key it doesn’t quite shake itself into life.

I wish it were more vital, because there’s a lot to like – or maybe “admire” is the word. Cusack’s typically hangdog presence and the sleety locations are just right, and the funny-desperate mood is maintained. But it doesn’t add up to a lot.