Director: Tze Chun
Talent: Alice Eve, Bryan Cranston, Logan Marshall-Green, Ursula Parker
Release Date: 8 November 2013 (Stockholm Film Festival)

Bryan Cranston is a exceptional actor, but terminal illness and the prospect of impending death has forced him to accept every feature film role offered to him, no matter how dire or iniquitous, in order to provide for his family when he’s gone. With that in mind, Cold Comes the Night features the three-time Emmy winning actor playing a half-blind Russian hitman called Topo (the Spanish word for mole ― ha ha!) who enlists the services of single mother Chloe (Alice Eve) to reclaim a large sum of money from police custody that he was supposed to be guarding. Cranston’s Russian accent is laughable and entirely minor to the film’s plot, while director Tze Chun attempts just as clumsily to achieve a measure of pathos over a mercifully short runtime of just under 90 minutes. To describe Cold Comes the Night as an ironic reappraisal of the Cold War ‘Red Menace’ thriller would be to give this dreadful film unwarranted credit. A real stinker. Thanks a lot, Gorbachev.

Words by Oisín Murphy-Hall