Cold in July (2014)
Expect spoilers.
5/10. I actually liked the movie, it wasnt bad, had some issues, wouldn't go very far out of my way to reccomend
This movie was not what I expected at all. I did not read any description or synopsis going into it other than "guy who plays Dexter shoots a home invader"
The first bit of the film makes it feel like its gonna be like a family "vs." type story, where the father comes for revenge and harasses these people, etc. Then out of left fucking field the real story starts to unfold, and it immediately got more interesting. And then, and fucking then, a whole other twist just jumps out at you and the *real* story unfolds.
This double twist was actually unexpected and very much welcome. However, the pacing of the film doesnt really follow through well. Maybe its my stream adled brain trapped in 2026, but movies based on these types of thrillers just dont carry the weight of the book well. This could have been small mini series with a bit more exposition, imo, and it would have worked better.
I say this because the film just ends and I didnt feel any emotional pay off, I just felt like, yeah, cool, shoot out. Not that I expected or wanted a long monolog before death, but theres so much shoved into a small amount of screen time that it just feels mostly surface level. Like I can see what it was going for, but I just didn't feel it executed it as functionally well as it could have
Also they just tail peolle like five fucking times like a few car lengths back and for people doing incredibly horrible and illegal things it doesnt make much sense at all for them to not notice.
I also thought the whole set up of "the FBI did all this" super weird and underwhelming. So the FBI has local law enforcement murder a couple of random people. Why did they bother with this at all? Like, why did they try to bait the father out at all? Why frame the dudes death as a home invasion at all? Not much of this was explained.
The film does some things good, but many things bad.
The acting was decent, M.C Hall and Don Johnson did good. Wyatt Russell is also in this film. He was definitely there. Shepard didnt get enough screen time, imo.
So overall, decent watch with god awful pacing.