I am baffled by the good reviews here. I have never seen a movie that looked so much as if the original director and screenwriter had given up halfway through, leaving others to finish the job any old how. I am not someone to get bothered by plot holes here and there, but Cold in July has yawning plot chasms and a jarring tonal shift mid-movie that deprive the main character of any plausible motivation for following the secondary characters around. A man in a taut, grim, hyper-realistic movie, who will do anything to protect his wife and kid, suddenly morphs halfway through into a man in a light-hearted adventure lark, who will risk his own life and thus the livelihood of his family in order to see justice done in a distant town. Let me just give one very minor spoiler that will not ruin the movie for those who have not seen it yet. Imagine that an ex-felon breaks into your house while you are away, and enters your little child's empty bedroom, leaving a symbolic threat against the kid that terrifies you and your wife. I believe no father would ever forgive a man for that, let alone forgive him at a moment's notice because he feels like breaking out of his rut and hunting down some bad guys who have nothing to do with him. I also believe no ex-felon who would behave so cruelly to a child's mother would suddenly turn out to be a good guy. The acting is great, no question, and I too was happy to see Don Johnson again. (He has aged well, and his voice is not so high-pitched and annoying anymore.) But I have never seen a movie that did such a bad job of motivating its characters.
Review of Cold in July
