The Ice Harvest - book and movie

Last week I read Scott Phillips The Ice Harvest (review later this week). I thought I'd watch the movie over the weekend to see how it translated to the big screen. It was somewhat of a disconcerting experience. The book and the movie are quite different; the movie being a strange echo of the book. The Billy Bob Thornton character in the movie only has a couple of pages in the book, and whilst some of the scenes mirrored the book, most of the plot had been altered to some degree, including the relationships between the characters, and just about all the dialogue had been re-written. Even the scene in the book where Charlie Arglist's brother-in-law crawls across the ice to be sick in the car's footwell - a scene that had me in a fit of giggles - had been reworked and lost just about all it's impact. I'm kind of baffled by this as the movie would have worked just as well, if not better, if it had followed the book. And as for the movie ending - the book nearly flew at the television! The book is pure noir - let's just say the film was heading that way until it bottled the end and went all Hollywood. The movie wasn't bad, but in my view it was a shame it didn't follow the book more faithfully.