I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

A Masterpiece!

For having a relatively low budget, the film's style and overall art direction are immensely impressive.

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

Cold in July is flawed southern noir seedy thriller set in the late 1980s. Dane (Michael C Hall) shoots an intruder in his home. He becomes a local hero but the dead man's father Russel (Sam Shepard) comes looking for him and threatens Dane's family. The police take Russel away but Dane discovers that dirty cops want to kill Russel. Now Russel and Dane team up and find out that the dead intruder was not Russel's son.To get answers, Russel brings in an old friend, a private detective Jim Bob (Don Johnson) who thinks Russel's son was involved in the Dixie mafia and now might be in witness protection. All three enter the dark world of snuff videos and vengeance.The film is full of plot holes, I never figured why the police wanted Russel dead and created such an elaborate scheme or why they were protecting his no good son. What begins as a cat and mouse game between Dane and Russel becomes a buddy thriller with Jim Bob providing comic relief.

A knee jerk reaction has consequences for the rest of your life. Most of us have been there. Cold in July starts out as an introspective thriller, it's easy to identify with how badly things can go wrong based on quick decisions. The thrill stays true to the mind-twisting "that could have been me theme" for a fair distance. It even gives the sense that it may be heading for greatness as consequences of bad judgement take centre part in the thrill. Then, just when it starts getting intriguing, it goes mainstream. It's hard to fathom that the same director (Jim Mickle) is behind both halves of this film. The, relatively, abrupt change of format makes little sense: It clumsily shifts the mood of the film and wastes away the initial efforts of subtlety. A bit like watching a relay race with David Lynch and Quentin Tarantino. And one thought will linger longer than any thrill from the film - why didn't Mickle finish what he set out to do? Although totally derailed from greatness, Cold in July still makes for a decent viewing.

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.

(Spoilers follow) Not sure what positive reviews may be about. What I saw was: 1) Huge plot holes: the issue of the burglar's identity, one of the chief reasons for the main character's questing, dropped without explanation, police involvement and cover-up given but the most cursory of treatments, the Dixie Mafia connection just mentioned, etc., I could go on all day. 2) Lack of realism: a quiet small-town framer, suddenly and without adequate explanation, goes along with people he had no acquaintance of just days before (in movie time) into a firefight with snuff movie syndicate characters. None of the other characters involved (either on the "good guys'" side or the "bad guys'" side) have any real prior involvement with him. No proper build-up into this change of character is provided, no insight into the inner process that induces such a transformation is even alluded to. 3) Acting: unconvincing and dull, at best.In sum: it's meant to be a gritty drama-thriller, but it's boring, generally lacks pace (without any good reason, as rarely any time is spent in introspective insights into the inner path each person takes to the final shoot-out) and fails to give viewers any compelling reason why they should follow this guy's detour from average Joe (with hardly any redeeming features) to gun-totting vigilante and back to average Joe.