In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

It’s sentimental, ridiculously long and only occasionally funny

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Having a cold in July is pretty rough, but these cowboys have it worse.Man. Do I LOVE Neo-Western films. Or, I like to call them "Modern Westerns," in which the setting is (mostly) modern times but with all the old Western tropes. Films in this sub-sub-genre include No Country for Old Men and Hell or High Water. This one is set in 1984, but it's closer to modern than 1885.While this wasn't perfect, it kept the interest, twists and tough guyness alive through to the end. With such turns in the story and characters we cared about, aside from one dud, it was worth the ride.Said dud kills an intruder one night to protect his family, either on purpose or accident, he still pulled the trigger. In comes "the father" to terrorize his family in vengeance. But, wait, there's more to the story as all I described takes place in the first 15% or so of the movie. Let the rest reveal itself, I say…The motivations of Dexter, er, the father dud and the end superhero powers kinda took away from the realism, but it's still overall worth your time. Just suspend your disbelief, know it's not equal to mentioned other neo-westerns and enjoy the time they put into this. Besides, once you find out their motivations, you'll be behind them 100%. Just wish they were showing another movie other than Night of the Living Dead for the 1,998,827th time in a feature film. Really. You can come up with another movie within a movie. This was just lazy screenplay writing by this point.***Final thoughts: Sad to see Sam Shepard go recently. What a fine and tough-man actor he was and he will be missed. Me seeing this, however, was a mere coincidence as I just happened to stumble upon this movie having never hearing about it in its 3-year existence. Still, it was a nice send-off to one of cinema's greatest.

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.

(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.

totally loved this movie, which is set in the late 80's. it was good to see Don Johnson again and he was awesome in this movie. Michael Hall and Sam Shephard did a hell of a job too.the over-all rating of close to 7 is very fair for this movie, it was an engrossing watch and i didn't want it to end. except for when the VHS tape was playing and i knew what it was gonna be about, the other twists i didn't see coming. i would classify this movie as a modern western, thriller noir with a very good score. if you are not a nit-picker and give this movie a chance then you're going to enjoy a real little gem of a movie. there's so much evil in this world and i totally believe the evil that was perpetrated in this movie. hooray for the vigilantes and men of honor.