SummaryHow can a split-second decision change your life? While investigating noises in his house one balmy Texas night in 1989, Richard Dane puts a bullet in the brain of a low-life burglar, Freddy Russell. Although he’s hailed as a small-town hero, Dane soon finds himself fearing for his family’s safety when Freddy’s ex-con father, Ben, rolls ...
SummaryHow can a split-second decision change your life? While investigating noises in his house one balmy Texas night in 1989, Richard Dane puts a bullet in the brain of a low-life burglar, Freddy Russell. Although he’s hailed as a small-town hero, Dane soon finds himself fearing for his family’s safety when Freddy’s ex-con father, Ben, rolls ...
While Hall and Shepard nail their parts, Don Johnson, still magnetic after all these years, steals the film as a sardonic private eye with a vintage cherry-red convertible.
A story that has been done before loads of times in movies but this movie takes that story and gives it a twist. Micheal C. hall plays a family man with a wife and child, and he is a good man, but one night he hears a nose in the house and he goes to check it out by bringing a gun with him; he saw a mysterious man with a flashlight look at his family photos so Micheal C. hall points a gun at the stranger a shouts him by mistake, and throw out the movie he has to deal with some big problems and he has to risk everything to try to make everything right. The music in this movie is like a electric rock music that works so well in this movie that it reminds me of the drive soundtrack. The acting is freaking brilliant in this movie and the directing is outstanding in this movie.
As entertaining as it is to watch Cold In July drift, the film has to eventually pick a lane — and that’s where this otherwise accomplished suspense picture runs into the ditch.
Though not without merit, Cold In July finds Mickle happily stalled in front of the drive-in cinema screens of his youth. Let's just hope he can find the exit.
This well-plotted, Texas-smoked thriller/neo-noir gets off to a strong start. A regular guy (Michael C. Hall) shoots a burglar dead in his home one night, and then the deceased's father (Sam Shepard), recently released from prison, comes around looking for revenge. But things are not as they appear; the story takes an interesting turn, enemies become allies, and a suave private eye (Don Johnson) gets into the picture. Unfortunately the film is marred by a cheesy soundtrack and a Tinseltown bloodbath finale - I thought they might go for something more nuanced. Good suspense and fine performances by the leads are the best things about it.
Kind of so good till Jim Bob Luke's entry.
I'm glad I watched it, but if I had missed it, I would have not worried much. Anyway, you can't say like that until you watch any movie. This movie was excellent, I mean it for the first 40-45 minutes. So much twist and thrills, I was almost regretting for almost missing it. But once the character Jim Bob Luke was introduced in a grand style, the narration went off the track.
The best parts were over, I got lost interest, and I asked myself why it has to be like this after a wonderful opening? Especially for the character Dane who was a family man and his choice was completely wrong. As mush as Dane, I wanted to know who he shot, but that was not the story's intention to reveal and went in a different direction to disappoint me.
The guys (actors) were awesome, but the writing was a let down, it owes lots of explanation rather telling a decent story. It was an indie crime-thriller based on the novel of the same name, sets in the 1980s. I won't say the film was bad, but I enjoyed only the half movie, the first half.
6/10
Michael C. Hall sports a trim mullet and 80s moustache as the mild-mannered man who shoots an intruder in his house late at night. The burglar's ex-con father (Sam Shepard) shows up and the intrigue begins. The film starts tightly-wound and produces some early tension, but once the convoluted plot starts to develop, it poses more and more mystery without much payoff.
For lack of better terminology, these dark, southern, noirish, dramas have become all the rage in Hollywood. Films like Winter's Bone, Joe, and Mud have been highly critically acclaimed and have come to define the 2010 decade in film, but where there is success, there are bound to be copycats, enter Cold In July. Whoever thought that Don Johnson would have any kind of chemistry with Dexter what so ever, must have been out of there mind, as right from the beginning, this film was doomed. A simple man kills a home invader and is stalked by the father of the man he killed. Obsessed with taking a life and wanting to know more about what led to this man become the person he's become, Dane (Michael C. Hall) and his team of misfits, stalk the family right back and uncover an even bigger mystery. While this story had potential, the writers thought it was too dark and decided to have some fun with it. Isn't that nice of them, to combine misplaced comic relief with actors who have no chemistry at all? Cold In July doesn't only lack chemistry but it also lacks focus. At times this film is as dark and serious as it gets, then just as quickly everyone is drunk and paling around, it just doesn't fit and it doesn't work. The whole genre of these films is dark, disparaging, and sometime disturbing. If their is any humor or positivity to be had, it typically occurs at the very end. Michael C. Hall pretty much has the same dry personality as Dexter, except with a family and a conscious, while Don Johnson is the psychopath who wants to hurt people and thinks it's funny. The bottom line is this film is just a mess of actors who don't belong with each other, characters who should never have gotten along, jumping between scenes that are the complete polar opposites of one another. I liked the story and there are a few interesting moments, but it's just isn't enough to carry the film.
Great cast and a director from kinder surprise. What a pointless piece of work. It`s starts with questions and mistery and then John Cleese (almost) shows up and says: And now something completely different! Real waste of three great actors.