★★ (2 out of 4)
Drugs deals gone wrong are as common as movies about drug deals gone wrong. And “In Cold Light,” now in theaters before drowning in its own blather, does just about nothing right. That’s a shame since the actors put up a good fight against the ambush of clichés in the script by Patrick Whistler that even acclaimed French-Canadian filmmaker Maxime Giroux (“Demain,” and “Felix and Meira”), in his English-language debut, can’t direct himself out of.
Scream queen Maika Monroe (“It Follows,” “Watcher,” “Longlegs”) sidelines the supernatural to take on the central role of Ava, who in the very first scene is captured in a drug bust and tossed into prison. Monroe holds us from the get-go even when the realization dawns that her character has barely been developed.
Two years later, Ava emerges on parole, making a sincere attempt to go straight by taking a job mucking stalls for her ex-rodeo star father, Will, played with a depth and gravity the film doesn’t deserve by “CODA” star Troy Kotsur, the first deaf male Oscar winner in the Academy’s nearly 100-year history.
Kotsur and Monroe sign the mutual resentment and disappointment of this father and daughter in scenes that momentarily raise the level of “In Cold Light” above the usual connect-the-dots action scramble. Just don’t get your hopes up since the formula template is rigidly followed.
It turns out that Will doesn’t know that his son Tom (Jesse Irving), Ava’s twin brother, is also in the drug business, having picked up where his sister left off. And Ava, now a pariah without money and power, sees no choice but to get back in the game.
It’s the hints of a better film—fiercer, funnier, more attuned to a woman’s point of view—that add to the frustration of watching this shabby collection of missed opportunities.
Everything backfires, of course, leaving Tom dead and Ava framed for the crime by corrupt cops. She’s not going back to prison, not now, not ever. So Ava goes back on the run, first trying to find a place for her brother’s orphaned baby which requires changing diapers, something never required of Bogart, Cagney and other famed gangsters in those 1930s crime epics.
It’s the hints of a better film—fiercer, funnier, more attuned to a woman’s point of view—that add to the frustration of watching this shabby collection of missed opportunities. The scenes of Ava getting bloody and battered mixing it up with drug lords are gorgeously shot on location in Alberta by frequent Giroux collaborator Sara Mishara. But the script fills the dazzling desolation of this landscape with cardboard figures. Even the villains are barely differentiated.
The waste extends to Helen Hunt, joining Kotsur in the shortchanged Oscar winner bench, who appears near the end as the big cheese crime boss. Her name is Claire—really, that’s the best hardboiled name they can come up with for an Al Capone in heels? “Do you really have to kill me,” Ava begs Claire, who nods in the affirmative.
“You can’t just walk away,” says Hunt. Maybe not. But you can, dear reader. If friends ask you to join them on the ticket line for “In Cold Light,” take a tip from Helen Hunt and just walk away.