MOVING IMAGES film reviews
V
V
Flat-out terrific!
“
D u st i n H o f f m a n , r o b e r t D o w n e y J r . , s o f i a V e r g a r a & s c a r l e t t J o h a n s s o n a l l h i t t h e i r s w e e t s p o t s .” GARY GOLDSTEIN
HHHH V
“
V
“ JON FAVREAU
SOFIA VERGARA
JOHN LEGUIZAMO
V
MICK LaSALLE
V
PETER TRAVERS
SCARLETT JOHANSSON
”
OLIVER PLATT
BOBBY CANNAVALE
DUSTIN HOFFMAN
WITH
ROBERT DOWNEY JR. AND
Somebody messed with Texas: Michael C. Hall and Sam Shepard
Cruel summer Robert Nott I The New Mexican
WINNER AUDIENCE AWARD
Cold in July, Texas noir, not rated, Jean Cocteau Cinema, 3 chiles
TRIBECA FILM FESTIVAL NEWPORT BEACH FILM FESTIVAL
NOW PLAYING
ChefTheFilm
#ChefMovie
Artwork ©2014 Open Road Films. All Rights Reserved.
Cold in July is a story of how bad men recover a little piece of their soul and how good men become killers in an effort to wipe out evil and be good fathers. It is director Jim Mickle and screenwriter Nick Damici’s cinematic adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s 1989 novel, and it stars Sam Shepard. If you know anything about Lansdale or Shepard, then you know it is going to be bloody and dark and full of familial conflict. Cold in July is a taut thriller that sets you up for a Cape Fear-type story and then takes a quick turn into exploitation-film hell. The time is 1989 — pre-cellphones — and the place is a small town in east Texas. It opens with a scene in which father, husband, and picture framer Richard Dane (Michael C. Hall) shoots and kills an intruder in his home. Dane is not proud of his handiwork, but the local police chief (played with a nice sense of time and place by Damici) assures Dane that he did the right thing and that all will be well. Except for one small monkey wrench: the dead intruder’s convict father, Ben Russel, is heading to town. You might think there is something weird and disappointing about a film that sets up its climax — a tense nighttime sequence of police stakeouts and home invasion — in the first 30 minutes, but as it turns out that’s not the case here. Russel is played by Shepard, who doesn’t have to say a word to scare anyone. His first appearance in the film may make you jump. Dane and his wife (Vinessa Shaw) come to believe that Russel wants to exact revenge for the killing by hurting their child. Then Dane realizes the man he killed was not Russel’s son after all. It’s almost impossible to find a nice little noirish thriller like this today, one that intrigues and delights and frightens you while softening the bloodier blows with deft touches of humor. It has its share of problems, but most of the time you won’t care as you follow the characters into a hellish world that you just know really does exist right around the corner from Main Street USA. As any fan of Lansdale’s work knows, quite often good really cannot overcome evil. Sometimes good is just happy to have survived the encounter. ◀ PASATIEMPOMAGAZINE.COM
39