I assumed that the cops didn't really count on Ben Russel trying to avenge his son's death. They needed to make Freddy disappear and they had a perfect opportunity to do so when Richard Dane shot the guy in his house, so they took it. Next thing you know, Ben Russel was digging around trying to get revenge. Ben became a major liability at that point. If he hurt the Dane family, that would bring a LOT of unwanted attention to the case, and if he simply dug too deep, he could discover that Freddy was indeed alive, which would obviously be bad for the cops. So, they decided to take the opportunity to lure him out and get rid of him. Killing him on the train tracks would make him look like a drunken, homeless felon, which no one would question too much.
A big part of the story is exploring masculinity what it means to be a man. That's why Dane ends up becoming a vigilante at the end. At first he just wants to find the truth and he's bothered by the lies the authorities are feeding him, and by the end he sees an evil man doing heinous things with impunity and wants to see him brought to justice. Throughout the course of the story he evolves from a man who is terrified to defend his family from a home intruder to a man who will go out of his way to hunt down and kill murderers. I can see why that wouldn't make sense to a lot of people, but personally I'd be lying if I said I hadn't had a few vigilante fantasies in my time.
Honestly, I LOVED everything about this film. The story, the pacing, the cinematography, the direction, the themes, the acting... I thought it was fantastic. I went in with high expectations and I was not disappointed. That said, especially the more I think about it, a lot of it is pretty implausible. Obviously it's a movie and all and that's often to be expected, but it's sort of unusual for a film this gritty and grounded to have a plot that requires so much suspension of disbelief and relies so heavily on contrivances.
For instance... What are the odds that the gang would get into such a conveniently timed car accident? Why is a man like Ben Russel who seems bothered by the idea of his sun murdering innocent people threatening the family of a guy who he thinks shot his son in self defense? And why cut the fingers off the corpse? That's something you do to prevent the POLICE from identifying a corpse you're ditching... Where the cops worried that the mob was actually going to dig up the body and run it's prints through a fingerprint database?!?
But even with all these (and more) issues, it's not at all hard to get invested in the film and come out thoroughly enjoying it. Which is sort of a relief to me as I'm working on a script with a lot of tonal, thematic, and aesthetic similarities, and there's a few elements that I'm worried will be really hard to sell (they're honestly WAY smaller than some of the leaps taken here). Cold in July has been a great demonstration to me that as long as everything else is done right, it's entirely possible to make a great film that requires a little suspension of disbelief.
Check out my action-packed short film, Liberation:
http://youtu.be/E4H0gJ4TwYc
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larosat
11 years ago
Agree completely in your first reply and u understand having vigilante fantasies ( and acting out in them if U could get away with it) but Dane's taking up arms is a big leap unless his family was threatened. At that point after befriending Shepard's character; it didn't make any sense. Still s very entertaining and suspenseful movie.
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