In short: Dead Bang (1989)

LA county homicide detective Jerry Beck (Don Johnson) is teetering on the edge of a breakdown. Suffering from the results of an acrimonious divorce, too much alcohol in the blood stream, the Christmas period, and a bad case of being a cop, he’s just one more drink away from getting out of control completely. Fortunately, the murder of a black shop owner and a cop provide him with a case to really get his teeth into, and soon he’s obsessively following the traces of a gang of white supremacist killers all over the USA. On the way, he’s also finding evidence for attempts of the disparate groups of racist shitheads to unite into a union of racist shitheads.

In his prime, poor Don Johnson was too busy shooting Miami Vice to actually have much opportunity to drag his TV stardom onto the big screen, losing out on quite a few roles that made other people stars, and ending up at best starring in films like this minor John Frankenheimer movie, made during the great director’s weakest phase. Which doesn’t mean it’s a truly weak film, for even mediocre Frankenheimer usually has its moments. As a matter of fact, Dead Bang does have rather a lot of them and seems just a script rewrite by someone with a bit more bite than TV writer Robert Foster has to offer away from being really good.

For there’s little to nothing wrong with Frankenheimer’s direction here, and whenever the script provides him the opportunity to stage one of his patented action scenes – even on a minor scale – or have a sad sack macho guy doing the sad sack macho guy thing, the film really comes to gritty life that becomes only more effective because Frankenheimer’s direction often seems so off-handedly easy. Johnson’s not bad, either, but then, he’s played this kind of cop for a while at this stage, so he doesn’t exactly need to step out of his comfort zone. He’s also supported by people like William Forsythe or Bob Balaban, experienced character actors all.

It’s just too bad that Foster’s script leans quite as hard on the cop movie clichés as it does, especially because he’s writing all the stuff about Johnson shouting at his ex-wife over the phone, threatening a psychiatrist, and the various attempts to get him off the case with all the intelligence and verve of someone who can only imagine these things by cribbing them from bad TV shows. There’s also an utterly pointless subplot concerning the dead cop’s wife (Penelope Ann Miller wasted on a non-role) that just disappears after the first act that has no business in the movie whatsoever. I do have to give it to the script, though, it does do well with the general stupidity of white supremacist ideology.


Given the general weakness of the script, it’s actually rather surprising how watchable the whole of the film is, really demonstrating Frankenheimer’s great talent by having him work with nonsense and still get a proper movie out of it.

In short: Cold in July (2014)

The life of peaceful Texan family man Richard Dane (Michael C. Hall) is turned upside down when he shoots an unarmed burglar in a moment of panic. This being Texas and all, the law doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with that – in fact, much less of a problem than Richard’s conscience has – but the burglar’s ex-con father Russell (Sam Shepard) is a bit of a different case.

Russell performs the expected threatening postures, and he’s clearly out for revenge but the situation will turn out to be quite a bit different from the semi-remake of Cape Fear one might now expect.

And that’s pretty much the point where Jim Mickle’s film turns out to be much more interesting and worthwhile than the extremely competent but unsurprising film it seems to set itself up as initially. It’s also just the first time the plot takes a turn into an unexpected and more interesting direction, always executed without the carnival huckster gestures of the twist-based movie but with a naturalness and matter-of-factness that can’t be easy to pull off, particularly not when played for a genre-savvy audience. It’s not as if each single element of the plot were terribly original in itself – in fact we’ve seen all these elements before in different films – but the way Mickle’s and his usual writing partner’s Nick Damici’s script (and I suppose the Joe R. Lansdale novel the script is based on) put these well-worn elements together feels new and fresh, and Mickle’s direction (working inside the 80s influenced not really retro style that’s popular right now, I suspect in part as a reaction against all movies being yellow and washed out) provides an unshowy and flawless drive to the proceedings. 

At the same time, the film is highly character-based with even the plot’s more dubious moments, as well as the characters’ many ethically questionable decisions, developed as natural results of what these characters here are, or are in the process of becoming. While this is a vigilante movie of a kind, it is, pleasantly, not one that wants or does preach the beauty of taking the law into one’s own hand; as a matter of fact, the film isn’t interested in asking ethical questions in an abstract way but rather in showing what these particular characters do when confronted with their specific ethical problems; and what these characters do isn’t meant to be a manual for the audience’s own lives.

The actors involved here are of course a huge part of this effect, with Hall (who to my eyes is one of the greats right now) and Shepard going the more naturalistic route they’re so damn good at, while Don Johnson uses the larger than life approach that has served him quite well in the last few years. Somehow, these very different acting approaches gel excellently too.

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