In his second feature film after the end of Dexter, Michael C. Hall portrays Richard Dane, a man quietly living with his wife and son in East Texas in the late 1980s. In the tense opening sequence, the family is roused in the night by an intruder. Richard retrieves his handgun from a shoebox in the closet and, acting upon instinct, shoots the stranger. The wound is fatal. This sets in motion the first act of Cold in July: recently paroled, the dead thief's imposing father, played by Sam Shepard, begins to watch and threaten Richard and his family. This indicates a suspense story directly in the vein of Cape Fear and The Night of the Hunter, but later developments push the film in more disturbing and unexpected directions. This is to its credit: many of the elements are recognizable and formulaic, but they are assembled in a way both neat and unpredictable, complemented by elegantly composed shots of rural desolation and an icy, John Carpenter-style synthesized original score.

The performances are also strong. Shepard in his wheelhouse portraying a taciturn ass-kicker with a thousand-yard stare and an air of weathered masculinity, but it is hard to argue with the intense result. Don Johnson steals his every scene as a larger-than-life private eye with a red Cadillac and a rascal's sense of humor; it is a piece of casting which will, I am sure, put a smile on the face of Quentin Tarantino. As for Michael C. Hall, his part is not as flashy, but he holds his own, functioning well as an anxious straight man for his iconic co-stars.

To be honest, when the film ended, I found myself questioning the architecture of the plot: for instance, I cannot entirely invest in the halfhearted reason given for the continued involvement of the protagonist, an introverted family man, in such a dangerous plot when he has many chances to depart and embrace self-preservation. The Sam Shepard character (his sense of fatherly duty, his general worldview) is also stretched thin and strained by the requirements of the overall storyline, forced to at once evoke Preacher Harry Powell and Dirty Harry. I am hesitant, though, to criticize the film harshly on such points because it held me firmly in its hard-edged, stylized grip from start to finish, and this is what is most important when viewing a genre-minded entertainment such as this. It is a tough, nasty, and entertaining ride.

B+