67
As entertaining as it is to watch Cold In July drift, the film has to eventually pick a lane — and that’s where this otherwise accomplished suspense picture runs into the ditch.
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What are critics saying?
75
Entertainment Weekly by Chris Nashawaty
Johnson ties some of the film's looser ends together and makes you overlook the ones that stay untied. Between "Eastbound & Down," "Django Unchained", and now Cold in July, Johnson has a nice little streak going of turning seemingly disposable characters into indelible scene-stealing rascals.
40
Though not without merit, Cold In July finds Mickle happily stalled in front of the drive-in cinema screens of his youth. Let's just hope he can find the exit.
63
While Jim Mickle's compositions lose much of their verve in the film's later half, his regard for the analog does not--and at the expense of perspective into his characters' emotional torque.
90
While Hall and Shepard nail their parts, Don Johnson, still magnetic after all these years, steals the film as a sardonic private eye with a vintage cherry-red convertible.
80
Cold in July never actually turns into the film you think it's going to, and even if that means there's a few unanswered questions ricocheting around your head as the credits roll, it also provides real, rich pleasures as it zigzags into the darkness.
70
Even as Cold In July’s overall arc approaches something of a dead-end, the individual scenes and performances are remarkable.
75
Cold In July doesn’t always work and it takes quite a long time to get adjusted to its coiling rhythm, but it’s far better than it has any right to be and perhaps, more significantly, is unusually absorbing and memorable.
80
A superior piece of Texas pulp fiction that starts out like a house on fire, sags a bit in the middle, then rallies for an exuberantly bloody finish.
80
Time Out London by Tom Huddleston
Any film that teams up gruffer-than-thou icons Shepard and Johnson is bound to go heavy on the testosterone, but Mickle undercuts all this strident manliness with a rich vein of self-mocking wit and paternal angst.