Movie: Cold in July

A film of three parts, the first one being far too long in setting the scene.It starts with an intruder breaking into a young family’s home and the young father, Richard, killing him. This being 1989 middle America – actually it could be today – not many questions are asked as the victim is a serial criminal. Statements are taken and by the end of the day, Richard and wife Ann are seen scrubbing the dead robbers blood of their living room walls and family portraits. (Don’t the police have specialist cleaners to do this?)However, the dead man is the son of a an even more seasoned criminal Ben, (Sam Shepherd) who determines that he should get vengeance so the first third of this film is about that. He turns up wherever Richard is with his daughter to look menacing. He is one step ahead til the point he is breaking into the family house and being in the kid’s room. It’s made clear that he wants to take out their kid to make up for the loss if his own.However, Richard works out all is not right with the decisions the police make and it looks like he has been used in one big set up to help a police cover up. This takes up the next part of the film as he wonders if Ben is caught up in this too when neither of them should be.It only then picks up again when Don Johnson arrives on the scene when you feel that immediately everyone in the cinema sits upright waiting for something better to happen. He’s an old war mate of Ben’s and now a pig farmer/private eye with connections in high places. The two fearless older men take the young Richard on a ride that he wasn’t expecting just because he pulled out a gun on an intruder to protect his family.So the set up was too long but I guess the film makers needed that to build the intensity, only for us to sit back in our seats and then for it to start again.Some flaws but watchable.7½/10Smile factor 6/10 (the Don Johnson lines)