Cold Comes the Night (2013)

Lately, action/thriller movies are full of these strong women who are totally unreal. When this trend started, it was new, thus interesting and, when pushed to extreme, this can be interesting any time (e.g. Kill Bill). But, in general, it's getting old.Here's a movie that gives a believable strong woman. Only once, towards the end, when the authors ran out of ideas, does she show unbelievable strength in a fight with a big guy. Also, she doesn't go towards the cliché of femme-fatale, using her looks to get what she wants.I don't really care if the main character is a man or a woman, but, in current state of affairs, this is refreshing.Other than that, the film is OK. Alice Eve shows she can act and not just look pretty, and the main villain (more of an anti-hero) does his job adequately. Others are not as good, but, not really bad.The story and it plots and twists are a little too much, but OK. It's actually fine until the last part, where, as mentioned above, authors run out of ideas. The last part spoils it a little, but, it's still OK.There is a sense that it could have been at least a little better

Mrs. Shullivan and I were in the mood for a crime thriller genre film and so we popped in Bryan Cranston's starring role in Cold Comes the Night. Cranston plays a Russian courier named Topo who is gradually going blind and he in the middle of a road trip which has him couriering one million dollars to his Russian mobster boss. As his sight is near gone he requires someone to drive the car couriering the Russian mobs cash and his driver just can't be trusted as we discover.His co-star is Alice Eve who plays a single mom named Chloe working as a motel night desk clerk in a seedy part of town strewn with ladies of the night who prefer to rent her motel rooms by the hour rather than by the night. Now Chloe has received an ultimatum by a case worker from Child Services that she needs to move her daughter to a more suitable living environment than hooker haven or Child Services will swoop in an take Chloe's daughter away from her.So Topo and his brother-in-law dupe of a chauffeur played by Robin Lord Taylor (more widely known as Oswald Cobblepot, the Penguin, on the hit 2014 TV series Gotham) make an over night stop over at Chloe's motel, rent separate rooms for the night, and then this thriller evolves....well sort of anyway.I can't say that Bryan Cranston was right on character as the blind Russian mobster since his Russian dialect was as believable as maybe a Jimmy Fallon's Russian impersonation. Of course you have a corrupt cop named Billy Banks played by Logan Marshall-Green who is supposed to add some hype and action to this crime thriller but I thought his acting was way over the top. (Also a personal observation, what makes so many actors/actresses use a stage name comprised of both their divorced parents surnames as a way of commemorating both parents and think we will remember them? This is a pet peeve of mine. Hey actors/actresses, choose one surname or another and get over yourself.)Without giving away too much of the movies plot (as there is not a lot of meat on this bone) Topo's cash goes missing and he will stop at nothing to find the scammers who have left him holding an empty bag that he must now otherwise report back to his Russian mob boss unless he recovers his stolen million dollars.A two for one rating: Mrs. Shullivan gave the film a 4 out of 10 and since I am a sucker for crime thriller genres and have seen literally thousands of them I give it a slightly higher 6 out of 10 rating. It is worth a late night watch if you are having difficulty sleeping. If you are a crime thriller genre junkie as I am, I don't think you will be able to go to bed without finding out first how the film ends. It's not so great but does have a "so/so" story line to keep you hooked until the final two words are illuminated..."THE END".

Why You Might Like It: This is a pretty solid kidnapping-ransom/heist film that manages to be pretty entertaining. The acting is decent from Alice Eve and Bryan Cranston and I thought Cranston's character was intriguing. I felt the technical aspects of the film were spot on as well. If you can ignore some of the plot holes and lack of realism, then the movie makes from a fairly interesting watch.Why You Might Not Like It: There are some obvious downfalls to the plot that are evident and substantial. In my opinion, there are also some spots that lack realism. If you can't ignore that, then you might want to avoid the film. Also, this movie is fairly average and there is definitely better films out there from this genre.Acting/Casting: 6* Directing/Cinematography/Technical: 5.5*Plot/Characters: 5* Entertainment Value: 6.5* Total - 6+5.5+5+6.5 = 23/4 = 5.75* - Worth a rental

This is not a great movie, nor does it profess to be, but I've seen far worse. It can be a bleak and violent noir, and if one looks too hard beneath the cracks of the plot, you might conclude that a lot of this is not believable. However, it maintained a decent air of tension throughout the film, and I was interested in how it would turn out.Set in upstate New York, it stars two actors whom I like quite a lot in Alice Eve and Bryan Cranston. Eve portrays Chloe, who manages and is part-owner of a seedy motel frequented by prostitutes and drug users. She's in danger of losing custody of her young daughter Sophia (Ursula Parker) to the State, unless she moves her to a more suitable environment.Cranston plays Topo (sporting a terrible foreign accent), who's going blind but acting as a "mule' transporting a great deal of cash to Canada with his nephew Quincy. However, when they get two separate rooms for the night at Chloe's motel, Quincy gets into an altercation with a prostitute and they're both killed.When the police impound Quincy's Jeep as evidence, Topo forces Chloe to try and retrieve the money, which had been stashed behind the radio, or he will kill her daughter. Chloe's partner in the motel is Billy, believably portrayed by Logan Marshall Green, who's a wacko and crooked cop and may have already stolen the money out of the impounded Jeep.From this point, they'll be plenty of murder and mayhem to come. I thought it all ended up in a fairly credible way.All in all, this film, directed by Tze Chen, was a fairly decent escape flick, if you don't mind the violence and can overlook the plot holes.