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How entertaining? ★★★★☆
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 24 June 2014
This article is a review of COLD IN JULY.
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“Sometimes the good guy wins,” Sheriff Ray Price (Nick Damici)
Home invasion, police corruption, snuff movies, COLD IN JULY certainly packs in at least three crime movies into its 109-minute running time. Even if we were not told it is East Texas, 1989, we’d guess the locale/period from the pseudo-John Carpenter synthesiser score and Michael C. Hall’s hillbilly ‘tache and comedy mullet; he is certainly a world away from the ice cool lead in DEXTER.
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Opening on the camera pulling out of a painting to reveal a nondescript home, the Dane family are asleep, to be suddenly awaken by an intruder. Richard (Hall) nervously handles his revolver, no gung-ho hero. Confronting the masked invader, there is a nice sense of dread. (Not to the level, though, where Bruce Willis encounters Donnie Wahlberg in his bathroom in THE SIXTH SENSE.) All it takes is the clock striking the hour, for the jittery Richard to accidentally yank the trigger in fright and inadvertently execute the burglar.
In apparent neat movie-style, the authorities, in the form of Sheriff Price, wrap up the killing briskly as lawful due to “fear of life”. Groans for anyone, aware that manslaughter/self defence does involve more bureaucracy, can rest assure that COLD IN JULY is merely lulling us into a false sense of expectation. And continually pulls the rug to satisfyingly rare effect. Too infrequently, once in a genre, does a movie subvert predictability.
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Conflicted by his actions, picture-framer Richard is no John Rambo. That sinking feeling sets on the revelation that the deceased is the only son of a newly prison paroled hard case, Ben Russell (a menacing Sam Shepard). Like a grizzly ninja, Ben just randomly turns up in the Dane residence sending the family into panic mode. Predictions of a conventional revenge B-movie are washed away when Ben is apprehended. Smelling a rat (was his victim really the son of Russell?), Richard spies on the police, and COLD IN JULY shifts into conspiracy mystery.
Then Don Johnson’s Stetson-wearing, Cadillac-driving (number plate “Red Btch” [sic]) private eye, Jim Bob, arrives in town and blows open the tone and narrative. (Jim is so cool, he even has the landmark desktop Mac released on Steve Jobs’ return to the Apple fold.) Injecting brash humour, an unusual team up ensues. Blood spurts are not shied away from, as is the descent into writer Andrew Kevin Walker (SE7EN, 8MM) territory. Added to the mix is the Dixie Mafia (think JUSTIFIED) and ROLLING THUNDER vigilantism. Such bonkers plotting is a breath of fresh air.
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