Cold in July

 Joe R. Landsdale is a ridiculously prolific author, but aside from Bubba Ho-Tep he's never really made it big in movies. Hap & Leonard, a few short story adaptations, umm, Johah Hex - the guy's written more for comics than movies.

 Cold in July is his other big feature film adaptation, and it's a good one: a pulpy Texan neo-noir that ends up in some pretty strange places.
 Richard Dane (Michael C. Hall in a mullet) is an everyman texan who gets stuck at the beginning of the movie in  a situation that'd count as a certain type of American citizen's wet dream: Armed with a gun, facing down an unarmed intruder in his home.
 He's not that certain type of American citizen, though - so when he's startled and kills the thief, it affects him deeply.

 There are some cool scenes after that, while we wait for the other shoe to drop: I really liked the one where Richard and his wife (Vinessa Shaw) have to clean up the mess once the police are done. But before they can return to normalcy, the father of the guy Dane killed (Sam Shepard) pops up and starts not-very-subtly menacing Richard's own son.
 For a while it looks like the movie is going to be about that, the Danes against this psycho old timer, and he obliges by pulling some very cool, very effective thriller shit. But then Richard starts discovering that maybe the police are keeping a few secrets of their own.

It's like a christian rock album cover, but with guns.

 So yeah, that's where the movie goes off the rails and becomes something a bit different. For a while it's excitingly unpredictable, and when it does settle down, it's on a different genre. A private investigator played by Don Johnson will factor in heavily, and there's a bit with what I think is the first time I see the old 'blood falls on a light source and stains the whole room red' trope outside of horror.
 It gets a bit silly, is what I'm saying, but in all the right ways.

 Nick Damici and Jim Mickle adapt the Landsdale story well - calling it lean is not very accurate, but even at close to two hours there's no bloat; Just a lot of incidents and bizarre developments. Mickle, who made his name with the excellent Stakeland, is a great, no-nonsense director with a gallows sense of humor and a very assured hand. Shame about the cinematography- the movie as a whole gets some really good ambiance when it's nighttime, but otherwise looks drab and a little flat.

 All the principals  are great in their roles, playing very different characters. Hall turns in a nuanced, sensitive performance, Shepard is scary as fuck and Johnson is all charm and laid-back cool. It really is a great cast to watch playing off each other.