Critic Reviews

Chun treats the material with a sophistication that brings its pulpy scenario down to earth. Not even Bryan Cranston with a cheap Slavic accent can stop him.

The noirishly titled Cold Comes the Night is a tense little thriller that provides juicy roles for its deft lead actors, Alice Eve and Bryan Cranston, as well as some well-played action and several neat twists.

Cranston takes small bites of this Beef Jerky Tartar script and chews, chews chews — savoring every corny fake-Russian line like the voice actor he was before “Breaking Bad” made him a star.

Twists pile as high as corpses before an overcooked ending sends things spiraling into silliness.

The real revelation is Alice Eve, who gives a strikingly direct and affecting portrait of a woman in a desperate situation. Still, after too many pat plot twists and one nauseatingly slow death, I wished the film surrounding her were a little fresher.

A capably assembled if ultimately unremarkable thriller.

Chun admirably attempts to make each thriller-y motion mean a little bit more. But oftentimes he fails, and the back half of the movie is filled with perfunctory suspense set pieces, doused in blood and full of trauma, that leave little impact.

Aside from the vividly bleak atmosphere, Eve's performance is the main reason to invest any time in Cold Comes the Night.

Even Cranston looks to be on auto-pilot here: he comes stomping through the action with a perma-scowl that suggests that his break from playing Walter White is little more than a busman's holiday.

As the screws turn, and the double crosses begin, the film sinks under the weight of its own ridiculousness. (The ever-reliable Cranston’s thick Euro-villain accent actually turns out to be one of the least ludicrous elements.)