Sweaty Texas thriller that makes sharp left turns with ease and that should re-establish 64 year old Don Johnson, a good ol’ boy private detective here, as a handsomely weathered movie tough guy. It’s set in a 1989 world of VHS tapes, bulky car phones, a retro synthesizer music score and a lead character, played by Michael C. Hall, who’s in the final stages of letting go of a mullet haircut. He also accidentally shoots an unarmed burglar who breaks into his house one night. The police are happy to write off the killing as self-defense, but Hall’s a goodhearted small town family man and he’s all broken up over it. Then the dead man’s father, a dangerous ex-con with a scary stare on him (Sam Shepard, pure shriveled Crypt Keeper menace), shows up with plans to make Hall’s life even worse.
From there, this thing piles on the plot twists so that enemies become allies and truths that we didn’t think to question turn out to be false. It’s a sharply told story, but what makes it a cut above most suspense films is that its characters come first. How these men feel about the situation is every bit as important as the situation itself, sometimes more so. This is the sort of film that will shoot a guy to death and then spend several minutes on the clean-up afterward, not to be disgusting (it’s a tame scene), but because it’s a character moment. Michael C. Hall gets up close and personal with exactly how much blood he spilled. He can scrub it off his walls, but he’s having trouble getting it off his conscience.
It’s a faithful adaptation of Joe R. Lansdale’s novel, condensed but not distorted. It’s a book that reads with such cinematic style that it’s a wonder it took twenty-five years to hit the screen. If this is the film that results though, it’s hard to complain.